It encourages crime.
[Part of the Design Folder]
Cheaters in games are not a new thing. There are always people looking for ways to go one-up on the rest of the population. While my own description of cheating probably encompasses things others might gloss over, I'm pretty sure we can all agree that having unauthorized, near admin rights for around 3 years is one of those no-no's.
As reported by MassivelyOP, this is the case with Ark. Even though I don't play that game, I can guarantee that I won't even bother trying anything from that developer: Studio Wildcard. Why? Because after finding these cheaters their decision is to simply not do anything to them. No bans, no wipes, no rollbacks.
There is no point in making rules that you don't / won't enforce, regardless if the criminal number is 1 or 100% of your player base. Granting amnesty just shows a lack of spine, and would probably serve only to encourage more cheating. That's not an environment I'd like to experience.
I imagine this will be their stance in all their games henceforth, and even if it isn't "officially" - the fact they've done it once removes -all- doubt in my mind that they will do so again. Good luck Ark, may the best cheater win.
Showing posts with label Massively. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Massively. Show all posts
Saturday, 10 February 2018
Thursday, 1 September 2016
MMO Design: How not to Sunset a Game
[Part of my MMO Design folder.]
Massively recently drew my attention to Psychochild's blog post of "How to Sunset a Game", wherein he talks about the Business vs Player issues about such an undertaking. My only real experience with a game closing down on me is Wizardry Online, which has led to my utter hate of all things SOE / Daybreak. Sure I've had Ultima Online shards shut down on me too, but all the free ones we played on were with the express knowledge of "this is just some guy/gal running the server, quite likely in their basement, and it can (and will) end at any moment."
But Wizardry Online was run by a "big" company so I was a bit surprised when news of its demise was announced. Obviously the market for it is dying since even the Japan released is being shuttered. How SOE went about this though is really turd level scum. They pulled all support / event runners from the game, while continuing to have a cash shop selling in game items. In fact I think all focus (of the last guy on the project) went to the store, trying to milk players for whatever money they could, knowing full well said items would be useless soon.
How I would have gone about it? Make all those cash shop items free. The zones that are level locked? Open them up to all players! If that's too hard to do coding wise per area, then put an NPC who just hands out XP. Players would have been encouraged to have one last hurrah. As a bonus, since they actually run -other- MMOs, maybe give each player who registered from "x" date a bonus "thank you" package they can redeem in one of their other titles. You know, to encourage your customers to stick around?
Instead they treated the player base like dying lepers, basically ignoring their last, simple, requests while simultaneously trying to milk the remaining whales like desperate leeches. If that sounded wrong, that's because it is. I'm never playing another SOE / Daybreak run MMO again because of that experience, and strongly advise everyone else to keep away from this terrible company too.
Massively recently drew my attention to Psychochild's blog post of "How to Sunset a Game", wherein he talks about the Business vs Player issues about such an undertaking. My only real experience with a game closing down on me is Wizardry Online, which has led to my utter hate of all things SOE / Daybreak. Sure I've had Ultima Online shards shut down on me too, but all the free ones we played on were with the express knowledge of "this is just some guy/gal running the server, quite likely in their basement, and it can (and will) end at any moment."
But Wizardry Online was run by a "big" company so I was a bit surprised when news of its demise was announced. Obviously the market for it is dying since even the Japan released is being shuttered. How SOE went about this though is really turd level scum. They pulled all support / event runners from the game, while continuing to have a cash shop selling in game items. In fact I think all focus (of the last guy on the project) went to the store, trying to milk players for whatever money they could, knowing full well said items would be useless soon.
How I would have gone about it? Make all those cash shop items free. The zones that are level locked? Open them up to all players! If that's too hard to do coding wise per area, then put an NPC who just hands out XP. Players would have been encouraged to have one last hurrah. As a bonus, since they actually run -other- MMOs, maybe give each player who registered from "x" date a bonus "thank you" package they can redeem in one of their other titles. You know, to encourage your customers to stick around?
Instead they treated the player base like dying lepers, basically ignoring their last, simple, requests while simultaneously trying to milk the remaining whales like desperate leeches. If that sounded wrong, that's because it is. I'm never playing another SOE / Daybreak run MMO again because of that experience, and strongly advise everyone else to keep away from this terrible company too.
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