Any love for some bots?

(tokamak) #81

I can’t prove that causation due to the lack of cases where F2P games do include bots. I can only name TF2 and that’s a really odd case in that it won it’s popularity due to being part of a retail package and only became F2P later, once it had established a large base.

I can point to a game like Shattered Horizon that in it’s final patch included bot, an offline mode and a horde mode and then died within weeks but that’s not a fair example either. Even though I do believe that the small community clinging together by a few players did get substantially disrupted by too many of the people trying stuff out offline too which it lost the critical mass required to continue an online community, but that was only one of the troubles.

Retail games don’t rely as much on the online community. Once people pay the 60 bucks it doesn’t really matter what they do. There’s some positive feedback in word of mouth but that’s it. A player that paid for the game can go online, offline, burn the disc, whatever the company already has his money.

An F2P game still has all it’s work ahead of itself before their players become paying customers. The more people playing, the more desirable the goods in the game become. I have no statistics this is just my amateur psycho-economical hypothesis. I don’t buy the notion that people want to pay for expressing themselves offline at all. People buy collector’s editions sure but that’s because people like collector’s editions and then the gear just happens to be included.

You’re not going to buy a Ferrari to drive around on private property all day, and I wouldn’t be interested in this year’s horribly expensive yet gorgeous G-Star RAW clothing range if I didn’t want to show off my exquisite taste to people around me. The value of such status goods increases by the amount of beholders while the price stays the same. Everyone has a point where those two values intersect and that’s when people start to pay for F2P content.

Bots, offline play and Co-op cuts directly into this amount of beholders. Directly by having less people, and indirectly by making the game appear less popular (by having less people online). A great example of this is Microsoft’s MSN messenger. People say that Facebook killed that hugely profitable and popular service but in fact it was already dying way before that. Why was this? Because people were able to set their status as ‘appear offline’ while still being able to see who’s online. This became very fashionable because it was a means for people to pretend they were having an actual life and weren’t sitting in front of a pc all day while still being able to come online when people that they were interested in talking to became online. Problem was that once everyone started doing this, the service appeared dead. This is crucial here, people WERE using it, but the application facilitated in making it look as if it wasn’t being used. This is why FB doesn’t provide this feature. You either appear as online or offline but when you’re offline you’re not going to see who’s online, you’re going to have to be online for that. Now don’t twist this last bit as a way to make bots work because it’s already stretching the analogy far enough as it is. There’s no equivalent of a bot in messenger services.

Now there’s three groups. The player that only wants to play offline, the player that occasional does it but doesn’t mind online play, and the online players. The first group is completely worthless, the third group is your target audience and the third group consists of the people you don’t even want to provide the option of being offline (and worthless) to, you want them online, and they won’t be bothered with that at all.

I do get that it’s in the interest of individuals to have bots around and I as well would expect it from a retail service. But business wise F2P follows different rules.If people want to pay a full retail price then, sure, give them anything they want for that price. But don’t sell bots to the customer base for anything less than that because they’re going to be dead weight to everything else you’re selling, so don’t even give them the option of being dead weight. You’re online or you’re out.

(zenstar) #82

Still got to point out that you’re lumping co-op together with single player there. Horde modes are online modes.
More online modes are not a bad thing.

And I’m fairly sure SD can do at least an enjoyable horde mode even if they simply clone the mode from another game.
And a decent implementation in a game your friends play is better than a better implementation in a game that your friends don’t play.

(stealth6) #83

I don’t mind seeing a co-op / offline option in the game, but not horde / zombie. That concept has already been done to death imo.

For instance the few challenges you had in Brink were quite fun…

(H0RSE) #84

It is not “utter nonsense,” he makes a valid point. Every game, let me repeat that, every game that I have ever played that features some sort of objective mode vs more traditional modes, the most populated mode every time is DM and TDM, whether it be UT or Halo or COD, etc. The only time the objective mode seems to beat TDM, is when the game was originally an objective based game, and TDM was added in later, like in Battlefield games. Although I vastly prefer class-based, team objective gameplay, I’m not blind, and understand that these types of games are not the the most popular or most played.

I highly doubt that your speculation that the ‘appear offline feature’ killed MSN messenger and not Facebook, considering that Facebook does indeed provide this feature - it also allows you to appear offline to certain individuals only or groups of people. Steam also has appear offline as does Xbox Live, and a plethora of other programs.

The MSN messenger example was poor and inaccurate, because it is just a chat program. You could be doing 1,000 other things on the PC other than participating in the programming. In a game like DB, chat will be one facet of the program, so even if a player was appearing offline, if he is in-game, he will still show up on the server list as a number. And if DB features an overall population count, whose to say it wouldn’t tally up appearing offline players in the final count, or even list them separately - “1000 players online, 200 appearing offline.”

The ability to appear offline has little to with the issue here. If players are appearing offline, yet still participating in matches, then what exactly is the problem? I appear offline all the time on XBL - it’s one of my favorite features of the program. It’s not necessarily because I am playing single player games, it’s because I don’t want to bothered - I don’t want to chat or join a party, I just want to be left alone and play games, multiplayer or otherwise.

Now there’s three groups. The player that only wants to play offline, the player that occasional does it but doesn’t mind online play, and the online players. The first group is completely worthless, the third group is your target audience and the third group consists of the people you don’t even want to provide the option of being offline (and worthless) to, you want them online, and they won’t be bothered with that at all.

As was mentioned about a dozen or more times, there would likely be no offline mode - none, nada, zil, zip, zero, since even a botmatch would require a login and a gamemode/server selection, all of which require the player to be online.

If people want to pay a full retail price then, sure, give them anything they want for that price. But don’t sell bots to the customer base for anything less than that because they’re going to be dead weight to everything else you’re selling, so don’t even give them the option of being dead weight. You’re online or you’re out.

Yes…this has been established already - even botmatches would be played online… SMNC has a co-op botmode - you play it online.

(SockDog) #85

[QUOTE=stealth6;413755]I don’t mind seeing a co-op / offline option in the game, but not horde / zombie. That concept has already been done to death imo.

For instance the few challenges you had in Brink were quite fun…[/QUOTE]

I find the straight up stopwatch survival extremely boring. This is why I think a horde mode with rolling objectives would be kind of neat without having a huge burden for additional assets or logic. It also means you could have classes perhaps with class limitations like only one med, one engie, one soldier/Covie and one FOps, forcing people to play to the strengths of each and work together on objectives.

Baddies could be mutants (doesn’t have to fit totally within the DB canon), security droids, wild animals etc. Doesn’t have to be zombies, I mean I understand it’s now hip to bemoan anything with zombies in it like everyone did WWII games. :smiley:

(tokamak) #86

It came up in entrepreneurship courses I’ve been taking alongside my study. MSN is actually a intensely studied subject due to the enormous popularity it’s rapid descent. Business science wise it’s just fascinating what happened there. Microsoft had it all and it just slipped away. I’ll go and see if I can dig up the research paper on it. Services like messengers rely on the snowball effect and F2P games are closer to a social application than to an actual retail media product when it comes to this.

I’m just worried sick that SD is going to approach this game like a traditional retail product the way they handled ETQW and Brink. I think that asking for things like horde and bots and coop is merely reasoning from an individual perspective and grossly underestimating how important a robust community is for the game. F2P’s need a different attitude to be viable. I also believe that part of W:ET’s success is that it didn’t have any bot support (except for some mod attempts), not a big part, but some of it. It was actually the first shooter that had me playing online for hours and hours. Before that it was a few UT deathmatch matches and then back to the safe offline playground again.

And maybe it’s not just a point about offline but a point about keeping game converged on one or two gamemodes, or at least make the gamemodes revolve around two teams opposing each other. Again, in retail more gamemodes is often better, in F2P, you want the gamemodes to be limited and preferably very similar to each other. You want the community tightly knitted together so everyone has the sense of playing the same game.

(SockDog) #87

Honestly? Such a broad statement really demands you to equally present a similar game that was damaged by bot support or admit that there is zero basis for your belief beyond it fitting what you want.

And maybe it’s not just a point about offline but a point about keeping game converged on one or two gamemodes, or at least make the gamemodes revolve around two teams opposing each other. Again, in retail more gamemodes is often better, in F2P, you want the gamemodes to be limited and preferably very similar to each other. You want the community tightly knitted together so everyone has the sense of playing the same game.

That’s such a terrible idea and one proven multiple times to be bad for SD and works for other FPS. Why do you feel a critical mass needs to be created around a single game mode is beyond me, it’s maddeningly blinkered and patronising towards gamers. You need to create a critical mass by bringing in lots of people. 5000 peak players on multiple modes is better than 5000 players in one. That’s 20000 peak players buzzing about DB not 5000.

You act like gamers have no means of self choice, does this come from your total inability to relate to players that find enjoyment in games you deem inferior?

(tokamak) #88

There’s a discussion of the deaf going on right now here. Your arguments are in good faith and they all sincerely serve to create a proper game product. But we’re talking F2P here. It’s just that it’s a completely different enterprise right now and there are new rules at play here.

Here’s a counter proposal, you show me one single co-op only F2P game. One. Not fair? Then let’s imagine how profitable L4D would be as an F2P game. Four players sticking together in a campaign that can last over an hour. What would players want to buy? And more importantly, who’s going to look at the stuff they buy, the three other team-members? The zombies?

Now imagine the same for a DB horde mode. Let’s imagine it’s going to be the most amazing game ever and it’s going to draw all the gamers in the world to it and forget about everything else.

Then SD has a problem because there’s no way you can MONETISE this.

There’s a reason why all F2P are versus/conflict oriented. People want to stand out and express themselves within a conflict. There’s no point in showing off to your three other friends, you want to show off to the entire server, and then another server and then another. You want as many eyes on your avatar in a single day as possible.

You don’t just want to tea-bag your opponent, you want to look outrageously awesome while doing so. You want that because you did some outrageously creative thing with the outrageously creative setup you spent an outrageous amount of time/money on and you want everyone to see it. And when everyone is done being amazed at the spectacle you just created you move on to a new audience.

I’m going to say another ridiculous thing. A server browser is a bad idea. Preferably you mix up players every match, no other way about. People want to stay together in a party? They pay. That’s how World of Tanks functions and it’s bloody brilliant as this system maximises the value of payable content. You hop in your tank and you get into a team survival match with twenty other tank-geeks for about 20 minutes, everyone is gawping at each other’s creations and when the game is over you’re going to have another go with a new group of people to gawp and stroke that epeen of yours. THAT is how F2P works.

(SinDonor) #89

Tok, you’re missing one BIG thing: Locki said he’s not going to make DB a pay-to-win game. THAT’S currently how F2P “works” in games like World of Tanks and Planetside 2. They are F2P, but if you don’t pay or you don’t play 6 hours a day, then good luck doing anything positive while you’re getting pwned by experienced players with better guns and abilities and vehicles.

Since that’s not going to be an option in DB, the casual gamer is not going to be able to amp up their account in order to better level out the playing field by dropping $50 or $15/mo to buy better items and in-game abilities.

That’s why adding bots either as opponents in a private match or as a fleshed-out horde or spec-ops mode might improve your player population which in turn allows you to market your pay stuff to a larger audience.

You also are able to market your game to a broader audience instead of just trying to pull competitive multiplayer-ers away from the established titles like Counterstrike, TF2, Call of Duty, and Battlefield. If DB’s competitive mp modes end up being good to great, but not the best fracking thing on the planet, well then you’re going to have a tough time prying those other gamers away from their favorite game. If that does happen and the ubers aren’t flocking in droves to DB, then at least you can boost your population by offering other modes that would attract the casual gamers. Once again, the casual skilled gamer population out-mans the elite gamers by a 10-1 ratio. It’s going to be hard to convince the casual gamer to enjoy DB’s competitive MP modes, as it is currently being honed by a bunch of high-skilled players in these Alpha tests.

I am sure the guys at SD have plans to introduce new gamers to DB, but honestly, I’d rather not see the main multiplayer portion of the game be dumbed down for the masses. It should be an F1 racecar that your average person would not know how to drive well without lots of practice. But, for those folks who aren’t having fun driving the F1 car and are thinking about quitting, why not point them to the go-kart track out back?

(H0RSE) #90

[QUOTE=tokamak;413830]
And maybe it’s not just a point about offline but a point about keeping game converged on one or two gamemodes, or at least make the gamemodes revolve around two teams opposing each other. Again, in retail more gamemodes is often better, in F2P, you want the gamemodes to be limited and preferably very similar to each other. You want the community tightly knitted together so everyone has the sense of playing the same game.[/QUOTE]

Even if they kept with a single gamemode facing 2 teams against each other, you could still have bots. Have one option for only pvp, the other with bot support.

Here’s a counter proposal, you show me one single co-op only F2P game. One. Not fair? Then let’s imagine how profitable L4D would be as an F2P game. Four players sticking together in a campaign that can last over an hour. What would players want to buy? And more importantly, who’s going to look at the stuff they buy, the three other team-members? The zombies?

First off, we are not talking about developing a game that is only pvp or bots - we are talking about a game that offers both options. You seem to think that there are only going to be bot players and only pvp players, thus separating the community. There is going to be crossover on both sides, thus I can’t possibly see how offering both options is a detriment to the community.

That being said, a F2P model of L4D could have absolutely worked. What could the buy? Weapons, gamemodes, skins, boosts, in-game items, maps, etc. See, if the game was a F2P game, certain mechanics may behave differently - like instead of players getting items like medkits in-game, you would need to buy them either with earned in-game currency or with real world money. Maybe players would need to buy ammo as well in a similar manner. The game absolutely could work as a f2p game, with that being said, things would likely have been changed from the retail release.

Now imagine the same for a DB horde mode. Let’s imagine it’s going to be the most amazing game ever and it’s going to draw all the gamers in the world to it and forget about everything else.

Then SD has a problem because there’s no way you can MONETISE this.

How is it that they can monetize a pvp game, but are unable to with co-op? They actually have a bit more things can charge for in a co-op mode, like weapons, since “pay to win” is far less a problem, being that all your enemies are bots. There are more things you can charge for when the opposing team isn’t real people that can complain… Hell, they could charge for the mode itself. Trust me, I’m sure there are tons of people willing to dish out some money for a co-op mode.

There’s a reason why all F2P are versus/conflict oriented.

As I mentioned already, SMNC (a f2p game) has a bot mode.

People want to stand out and express themselves within a conflict. There’s no point in showing off to your three other friends, you want to show off to the entire server, and then another server and then another. You want as many eyes on your avatar in a single day as possible.

3 other friends? What are you talking about? Co-op modes can be consisted of an entire team of 10, 12, or more players - it’s all about how it’s implemented. And it’s not necessarily people only paying with friends - people do play co-op games with randoms, thus, in both cases I mentioned, players are still able to “show off” their avatar…besides, some people dress up their avatar for themselves, regardless what others think.

You don’t just want to tea-bag your opponent, you want to look outrageously awesome while doing so.

I actually have this idea that I would love to see in a game. basically how I imagine it is, whenever a player teabags another player, the game would pick up on it, and the teabagger would be levitated in midair and centered on the players screen. All his bones would be twisted and broken, his limbs ripped off and then his torso gibbed. then the message “stop being a dick! Bad sportmanship will not be tolerated,” comes up on the screen. The player would then have a nice long respawn time to think about his actions. I had a similar idea for spawn campers too.

(tokamak) #91

EDIT: will post a response tomorrow.

(H0RSE) #92

[QUOTE=tokamak;413862]
I’m saying that as long as a player is playing co-op he’s not functionally online to the crowd that really matters.[/QUOTE]
The crowd that “really matters,” (I can’t believe you actually just said that) are the ones who offer up some money, which can be achieved regardless of the gamemode.

(SinDonor) #93

If your pay model is only aimed at competitive players, then you have to figure out a way to continually increase your competitive player population, which includes getting lower-skilled players to enjoy your game. Throwing them into a public competitive multiplayer match just to get destroyed 10 games in a row is not going to do it, especially with no Pay-to-win options. Plus, high-skilled players SHOULDN’T be having fun destroying newbs. Well, immature children enjoy pwning newbs, but high-skilled adults should want equal competition.

By forcing casual low-skilled gamers to join the main population, you’re creating a poor gaming environment for most players. Most newbs are not going to have fun getting destroyed and seeing their name at the bottom of the scores list every game. The uber players should not be having fun cake-walking through low-level competition all the time. It happened in Brink A LOT, on Xbox Live.

We had probably the 2nd best XBL clan on Brink (next to Pho7on, Matters, and Ematic’s clan). When the 4-8 of us got together in a game, we would NEVER LOSE (except to the #1 clan, who would kick our asses). It got boring quickly as most of our opponents would quit after a game or two and then we’d be stuck playing against 1-2 humans and the rest were the Easy AI pub-match bots. We begged for an update to either have HARD AI bots in the pub matches or an updated lobby that would wait a bit for the other team to fill up before starting, but SD’s hands were tied by Bethesda, IMO.

Point being that in DB, the same thing is going to happen except instead of playing against some EASY AI bots in pub matches ala Brink, it’s just going to be a revolving door of low-skilled casual gamers who play for a few matches, get disheartened, then leave to never come back. In the end, you’ll have a small group of high skilled gamers who just play each other all the time, and I dunno how that’s going to make any money in a F2P model either.

(BioSnark) #94

Here a couple: Hellgate London, Spiral knights, Vindictus, Path of Exile. These are a couple I can recall playing/trying because they made it into 'merka and Eurolands. I’m sure there are many, many more in the F2P lands of Asia.

(H0RSE) #95

I don’t know about the other games, but Hellgate London was a retail release. I know, because I pre-ordered it.

(BioSnark) #96

and then it died. and then someone bought it and it was re-released as a f2p.

(zenstar) #97

I think we’ve pretty much exhausted the discussion here.

Some of us don’t want bots of any form.
Some of us want a horde mode but no bots in pvp and no single player.
Some of us want no horde mode but want bots in pvp and a single player or training of some sort.
Some of us want some sort of training / challenge / offline mode but no bots online.
Some of us don’t really care about either hordes or bots or modes.

Tok: I think you’re being a little over-restrictive in your views. There are plenty of f2p games that are centred around players mutually overcoming conflict that comes from NPCs of some nature (most of these are MMOs) and a quick google will prove that.
But: I also think you’re allowed to think that and it’s obvious that nothing we’ve said has convinced you otherwise. Pretty sure this thread has hit a stalemate now.

Every possible response I can think of has basically already been posted here and it’s basically down to opinion and personal preferences unless some new information comes to light.

(tokamak) #98

MMO’s get a free card because next to raid based content there’s an open world and city-hubs in which everyone is checking each other out.

I’m just going by a few points. I do think I already covered most of it but some things may not be clear and some things are just completely misconstrued though I suspect it’s done unintentionally.

How is it that they can monetize a pvp game, but are unable to with co-op? They actually have a bit more things can charge for in a co-op mode, like weapons, since “pay to win” is far less a problem, being that all your enemies are bots. There are more things you can charge for when the opposing team isn’t real people that can complain… Hell, they could charge for the mode itself. Trust me, I’m sure there are tons of people willing to dish out some money for a co-op mode.

I can’t take your word for it because I haven’t seen any examples of people willing to do that. I’ve seen countless examples of people willing to do that in versus oriented mode but not in co-op. Charging for things and having people actually desire them are two different things. To me it feels that even the most dedicated L4D fan isn’t as likely to purchase in-game content as much more casual gamer in a game like WoT or Tribes or Planetside is. This is simply because there’s less means to express yourself (regardless of how much stuff you can buy) and the audience is inherently smaller (even the biggest co-op will only be half as big as a versus shooter) and less significant (you want to express yourself towards your opponents more than you want to express yourself towards your team-mates).

I simply don’t think people are fully appreciating what drives free players to start buying things in a game. No matter how attractive the F2P game is and how broad it’s net, at some point the F2P needs to fulfil a desire which can be bought with money, otherwise you’re left with a widely played game that only a few people are willing to pay for. And maybe this point supersedes this thread and should be held in the business model or anything because right now this is a crucial point that my dissidents are failing to pick up on their part.

So in the interest of not conjuring another wall of text, a few short points:

  • ‘Competitiveness’ as a definition is being abused again. It’s used interchangeably with what’s usually understood as ‘pro’. Ideally in an F2P game even the most casual player is involved in being competitive. He’s aware of his place on the ladder and he’s aware of the metagame of subtance trends and cosmetic fashion.

  • ‘Pay 2 Win’ is a derogative term meant for cheap cash-grab games and actually isn’t a relevant point in the context of competitive versus co-op and bots. A co-op game can just as easily be Pay to Win as well. And besides, Wot only has a very small purchasable advantage which is so expensive that it doesn’t appear in the usual game and is only reserved for official matches between clans. Calling WoT ‘P2W’ is doing this excellent example of an F2P game a disservice.

  • An F2P game can’t just survive on cosmetical goods. There needs to be a link to the gameplay content and this link is time. In most F2P games most content is obtainable through spending lots of time and effort on the game and a means to pay yourself out of this timesink is then offered to the people who can afford it.

  • The way this time-sink functions is crucial because it’s not just about growing in the game, it’s also about being able to adapt in the game. Ideally an F2P game offers lots of options and plenty of ways for players to make the wrong choices and choices they’re not satisfied with, then offer them a way to retrace their steps at the cost of lots of effort OR there you go, spend money on it.

  • MMORPG’s get a free pass on having the co-op modes because they include capital city hubs in which everyone can check each other out. That’s how games like WoW get away with being so diverse. Everyone can go off and do their own thing but they all end up back in the same city where they can show off and boast about their accomplishments, this is absolutely essential for the sense of achievement and satisfaction people are willing to pay for.

And there we arrive at the emotional side of F2P games. As in previous posts, players want to express themselves, they’re willing to put effort or money into that. However, when they get bored, dissatisfied or when the metagame catches up with their playstyle, there’s a much bigger need to make amendments, and that’s when more time and money is spent into the game and that’s where an F2P game thrives.

And now I’m getting to the point because it’s yet again turning into a wall of text:

In order for the game to have this emotional dimension, a player must feel like everyone is in the same boat. Everyone is trying to climb the same ladder and there’s only one pinnacle to be reached (though there are multiple paths possible). This mountain peak may be slightly segmented at the top (so Tribes has only a few slightly different modes) but it shouldn’t vary substantially because they’re breaking up the race to the top. Climbing one of the two smaller mountains is not as inspiring as climbing the one big mountain everyone else is trying to climb as well.

Content that involves bots differs so much from DB’s main content that it becomes an entirely new game in and of itself. This means that SD is creating two games that are competing with each other and preventing each other from getting that emotionally important mass an F2P so desperately needs in order to start selling goods.

I would really recommend anyone to pick up a popular F2P game and start playing it. Just to experience how it feels to be caught up in the race to the top. You’l be drooling over the large airships other people fly in Planetside, you’ll be frustrated with that tank that is just slightly better than yours in WoT and you’ll be puzzled by the things other classes can do in Tribes: Ascend.

(SinDonor) #99

Most of us here would like to have access to bots or a horde mode for reasons stated above. Tok does not for his reasons stated above.

The end.

(tokamak) #100

I agree with the reasons why an individual would want to see bots. An individual would also love to see all the payable content be cheap or even free, but in the same vein, it’s not a viable business model.