Almost every other game listed in this thread (CS:GO, PUBG, Overwatch, Dota 2, LoL, R6) uses the same/similar revenue model that I suggested in my first post to fund further events and support. It works.
I am more than certain that MS can continue to support the game for the foreseeable future without muddying up the game with a poor business model. The successful games all share two things in common:
There is no mandatory recurring subscription to play online.
Additional purchasable content does not impact game balance beyond cosmetics.
Iâd gladly pay $2-5 /month just to support the Dev Team.
Who in their right mind would be opposed to $1.99 optional subscription which gives no gameplay advantages?? If those guys want to quit in protest just because people have the option to give $1.99 toward the dev team every month then Iâm glad theyâre gone.
As mentioned at the start of the thread, there are two major issues at the moment:
finding games
crashes
If itâs not working now and since they have a history of closing multiplayer servers down (ex: MSN Gaming Zone), today and this year is a concern too. #3 makes issues like #1 and #2 priorities rather than secondary.
I disagreed that Age of Mythology wasnât created to make money. It certainly was.
Yes, and it wasnât a bother. It was joy.
Come on, really? Nitpicky? Your main point was that they were one-off purchases and I showed you the main problems with your conclusion. Itâs not being nitpicky, it gets to the heart of your examples. If youâre not interested in an honest discussion, I suggest you move on. Iâm really not here to argue about trivial things and I could be playing AOE2 instead.
What he meant is that they are listening to usersâ feedback (our feedback) and that determines the directions of their development (ex: requested features, which bugs to fix, etc).
He wasnât defining Gaming as a Service as:
Your idea is sort of the opposite of Gaming as a Service.
I still donât get this very well. The report topic you linked me earlier was about a problem that doesnât regard the game, exactly. Itâs a problem with Microsoft Store. Outside this issue you mentioned, are there others regarding finding games, and are those many/happening often?
Yeah, still happens, specially with custom scenarios. But on other areas the game generally runs fine for most of players. Itâs performing good (even better if you compare how it was some months ago).
Gaming Zone surely closed (and again, nothing lasts forever), but itâs not like it came out of nowhere, the service ran for a entire decade. At its last days it was so full of security failures and the tech bubble burst affected it really hard, so not only the service was infested with crackers but they went bankrupt. Its closure doesnât put Microsoft on a âhistory of closing multiplayer serversâ. It was a one-time situation due to a very specific context, not a common practice.
Thing is I canât see how can you use it as a mirror to create a concern on the present day. I would even argue that bringing this as such is anachronic. Online gaming now is hugely different from those days, the Xbox has never been so big and Microsoft is alive and well ecomically. And why evoke such a unreasonable level to the concern, come on. Worrying that they would close servers at the present or on the near future?! You donât need to hyperbolize alarmism to make a point. Just look at AoE2HD with lobby and workshop support since 2013, or the simmilar situation for ESO and AoE3.
One of the goals selling the game obviously was make money, thatâs with every game with a price (and even with some that arenât priced). But to claim that it was made solely for raising funds is not a matter of opinion, if you have no proof to support that thereâs no sense claiming such things.
So you should know that they explicity confirmed to be supportive to the multiplayer. I donât understand why you asked about that.
My main point was that there are plenty of examples of one-off purchases, under 60$, with no extra fee for playing multiplayer in the market that thrived. Nothing that you pointed out detract what I said, none of these games charge extra fees in order to play online. Charging to play online on a already paid game rarely happens outside the MMO genre â and even at this genre we have examples of this business plan failing, such as what happened to The Elder Scrolls Online, with its 60$ price and 15$ recurrent subscription in order to play at its launch. It floped so hard that they had to revamp their business model to a one time 20$ purchase to the base game and the possibility of buying expansions later, then the game succeed commercially â that is hard to judge if this is viable based on other experiences. The absence of such examples could be a indicative of the unfeasibility. From my gut I can tell that it would be upseting, games are already expensive on my region, charging even more in order to play would be insane. Piracy would escalate unprecedentedly.
Thatâs not my idea of what GAAS is, my idea was based on the definition given by the dev team on the linked article. What you quoted there was the development of my point about how the influx of money wonât impact on the game support, because the investment to that is planned previously by the publisher. Even if the game sold 5x more than it did the support would remain somewhat the same as it is now, because thatâs the investment the publisher did on the game. Any extra money that comes in is profit, not more investment.
This topic should be flagged as inappropriate, it really offends me that some guy just found the game some days ago and now he wants to change it, i feel personally attacked i bought this game in 2001 and 2005 cus the disc died, later the HD version with all the DLC and now this game, which is way more than 60 dollars all together.
The game has survived 20 years without milking its player base, mostly by its fans and community, go to other games with that cheap capitalism.
Adding fees would mean charging for mods, adding packs or bundles to benefit the player that spends money, like the guy above suggesting boxes with extra resources, no no, it goes against the game and its community, we the PC world gaming refuse to pay for multiplayer services, we are not consoles.
For me, sometimes it crashes soon after I open the game. Sometimes it crashes when starting a multiplayer game. Sometimes it crashes while trying to go into the options. Sometimes it crashes during a game. By crashes, the game just exits out completely, no error messages of any kind. Iâve seen other reports like this in the forums.
I have a good internet connection and a good PC.
Your and my definition of reasonable are different. I added my feedback in the appropriate forum so that they can see it. The issues from #1 and #2 are frustrating and donât provide an excellent gaming experience, therefore the feedback. It is similar to what happened previously, but if you donât see that, thatâs okay.
Iâm not going argue with such a self-contradictory and/or pedantic statement.
No, they didnât explicitly confirm that in the article. They mentioned fixing bugs and adding a new autoscouting and other similar stuff, but thereâs still the elephant in the room. For example, read 10 Reasons AoE2:DE is so bad to get the big picture.
No, it wasnât. You were attempting to refute:
(which you quoted)
And replied with:
However, as already shown above, your examples donât disprove the claim.
They didnât really give a definition beyond âWeâre developing based on your feedbackâ.
That wasnât in the article.
You previously said:
As already mentioned, GaaS does NOT mean that and it usually means the opposite. When you see GaaS, donât conclude what you conclude, because itâs not correct. And, no, the developers werenât saying what you concluded.
I appreciate the discussion, but itâs at the point of I should probably bow out of the conversation. Have a nice night!
Oh, I see. But most of the times that this issue happen is either because of crossplay being disenabled or the user game version not being at the most recent update, which arenât bugs, really. I hope that any more bugs that may cause that issue get patched ASAP.
What? No, it is not simmilar, Microsoft isnât at the verge of a stock market crisis. The game having issues doesnât mean its support will be discontinued in the near future. How can you correlate that??
So, is it asking for you to support your allegations self-contradictory and/or pedantic? Okay.
But Games-as-a-Service is really more about how Âwe work, and it involves staying more closely connected to YOU â the Community â and making sure weâre prioritizing the things YOU care about. When we shipped the game last November, it stopped being about us. Right now itâs all about you. Youâre the rock stars. Each and every one of you.
Unless the wantings of the community are about not supporting the multiplayer, this is pretty explicit for me.
No, I wonât take a topic full of false claims as a parameter.
I donât know why we are looping at this point because these games still donât charge extras fees to be played. You buy the game, you play online.
As I stated before, I will not contradict their definition of their model on their game.
Look, whatâs happening here? I never claimed anything of that to be at the article, I already clarified that I was developing further my point. Iâm not defining GAAS there, Iâm stating that, because DE is at this model, that can only mean that the publisher already accounted the investment for this support happen along with every other cost of the game development, and theyâre not in a âlack of moneyâ, but rather at the planned budget.
But anyway, I would gladly like to know of GAAS games that donât account the support expense prior to the launch.
This particular issue is a known bug that they will fix in the next server update (hopefully).
What stock market crisis are you referring to? MSN Gaming Zone shut down the multiplayer lobbies around 2006 and had nothing to do with a stock market crisis.
Ah, no. Your comment that itâs a goal to âobviouslyâ make money from selling a game, while at the same time downplaying it, is self-contradictory. I never said âsolelyâ nor anything similar. Please donât change my words.
Looping? Iâm responding directly to your new comments.
For whatever reason, youâre stuck on âstill donât charge extras fees to be playedâ. Iâve already clarified this several times over. Iâm not saying to put all of multiplayer as a subscription. Please read the previous comments to understand what Iâm saying.
Please quote me their definition in the article then, because they didnât really give a definition beyond âWeâre developing based on your feedbackâ.
Add a subscription to this game it it will die, very quickly.
Why is this even being debated?
Only substantial issue Iâve seen with this game is the immense lag in games (on Australian servers at least) against AI, 3v3 or even less (presumably more as well).
So youâre saying that if everything remains as it is now, but they add a subscription for getting access to weekly or monthly tournaments (which currently isnât a feature), that the game will die, very quickly?
It wonât die, because all the existing features would remain as they are currently.
Or if they add a subscription for Clans? It again wonât die, because the Clans features doesnât even work (not well anyway) as it is now.
Or if they add customizing skins (ex: custom flags in-game, custom building designs [but same functionality]), it will die? Again, donât think so.
If you think that people will tolerate monetization so easily, you have no idea about humans. Your idea is insanity and 99% of the comments above are people TRYING to get the idea across to you.
It. Is. Bad.
People hate greedy companies, or what they perceive as it.
I cannot break this down any further. Do the world a favour and abandon the idea.
On the contrary, do the world a favor and learn about supply and demand.
And, I just realized Iâm arguing with very young adults or kids. Me culpa. I never thought I would be at the stage where Iâm telling others on the internet, âSome day when youâre older you will understand.â I guess Iâm old enough now.
Iâm bowing out of this conversation and wish you all the best.
Thatâs funny, because the guys who criticize the game clearly stated they expected it to be better because they ALREADY paid. Trust me the people who are disappointed would just stop trying and go play somewhere else if they were told you need to pay more to improve the game.
Then buy some other copies of the game and organize a giveaway or something, and youâve got yourself the equivalent of tons of month of subsription.
First you claim that AoM was made under the âmentality of creating a new game to make moneyâ. Then I contest that saying that AoM was actually developed simmultaneously with AoK, so it couldnât be made with the purpose of raising funds. To what you respond âOkay (sarcasm)â, which I can only interpretate as a contestation to my argument. So I asked you to support your claim, as Iâve been never aware of such allegation and in fact the common info I had thus far on the making of AoM proves that your claim is not true. Following that you just avoid answering me and started calling my questioning pedantic and contradictory, and now still avoiding it trying to invaluate my argumentation being nitpicky because I condensed your point as the discussion went foward. Honestly.
The whole argument was about this, about âone time fees being unsustainable for games that requires long-term maintenanceâ. The examples I brought were all regarding to justify the point of how this is not unsustainable. There are plenty games that doesnât charge players extra fees to be played and thrive nonetheless. You repeatedly tried to deny it departing from the point that they donât charge extra fees when the argument is all about that!
Sorry, Iâm tired of quoting the same stretch of an article, to a person that read the whole, multiple times. This is nonsense. Just because you doesnât agree doesnât mean itâs invalid. And you and me are in no position to invalidate their definition, because, again: their game, their model, on the industry that they are a part of.
Please quote me their definition in the article then, because they didnât really give a definition beyond âWeâre developing based on your feedbackâ.