I find endgame raids to be frustrating and they probably cause a number of people to quit playing. Getting 25 people organized is difficult, then they have to have gear and experience. People don't want to watch Youtube videos, they want to play a game. Publishers could make this experience a whole lot smoother IMHO. I would create training areas where single players can practice various roles in a raid (tank, healer, dps) and recieve a rating based on their performance. Possibly even have the instructor charge more in-game gold for additional help...such as voice commands or on-screen arrows showing where to go. These training areas would be gear neutral and focused just on training boss mechanics.
I'm sure a rating system could be developed to allow raid leaders to easily access someones skill at a fight in a particular role. This would end needless wipes by selecting underprepared players just so the group can do something. Training is more fun that watching Youtube videos.
I also hate gear distribution...that needs to go. First it's too damned time consuming and second it makes for far too much drama which is not fun. There's no reason to have a group leader decide on how gear should be distributed. Many publishers like random drops and that can be kept as well. Players can earn coins or tokens for their participation those items can be turned in for loot bags. Loot bags can be geared toward specific roles, Healing, DPS, Tanking, etc. More tokens per bag could be used to acquire specific armor types or specific damage types, etc.
MMOs have been very successful in the US after they adopted a F2P model (actually, I'd the model is more Freemium than F2P). LOTRO, D&D Online, TOR, etc. P2P MMOs outside of WoW and Everquest have struggled in the US, though Rift was successful at it for a while, just not as successful as the other two were.
P2P MMOs may not be successful or as successful in the US as compared to Asia for reasons controllable by the publisher. The $15/month price point with a $60 game and $40 expansions is really going to the well too many times. Lower monthly fees of $5 would draw in more people and still make substaintial profits for the publisher. Once you engage in a P2P MMO, it doesn't make sense to add another subscription. Publishers need to factor in that there are about 15million MMO players worldwide and they must attract a percentage of that pool to be successful by the model they choose.
Further, almost all MMOs play like WoW, so what's the compelling drive to leave that MMO (which you have accumulated all kinds of goodies) and go to another MMO and start over? Higher level characters on PVP servers negatively impact the experiences of lower level character, leading many to quit in frustration. This in turn keeps the 15 million MMO population base from expanding further. Coordination of large numbers of people for raids is far to time consuming and frustrating. Most publishers make only PvP and raids as endgame stuff, and in order to play them you must grind daily quests. Can't a publisher offer anything else?
Freemium allows you to pay for what you want and allows you to be more casual, though ultimately it can be more costly. When you pay a monthly fee you are wasting your money when you play other games. Paying for what you want/use etc. is more appealing to the American mindset than paying for something you may or may not use.
If you didn't pay for multi-player games in the current generation, why would you pay for them in the next generation? The multi-playing requirement may turn more potential gamers away from the various systems. Sony kinda hinted that they may be charging for multiplayer like MS does.
Sony's in bed with the same publishers as MS, I really don't see a different used game policy on the PS4. Sony probably doesn't have a creepy monitoring requirement equivalent to the Kinect. So unless there's some real gaming draw I'm not sure about the PS4 either. I don't plan to buy into this generation (if at all) for at least 3 years. Maybe something else will crop up in the mean-time like the long rumoured Steambox. Maybe Ouya will take off too. I'm in no rush to throw money at a new gaming system.
I'm hoping its a watershed moment in a different way. I hope gamers and TV wavers stand up and say enough with this intrusive spyware and ridiculous DRM being forced down our throats by MS and Sony. It would be awesome if there was under 10 million units (including the Wii U) sold in the next 2 years.
"The cloud service supporting Microsoft's Xbox One will multiply the device’s local performance threefold,"
Obviously you didn't read the article. MS claims the cloud multiplies the local processing power 3 fold, not 3 fold plus local. Further, the processing power will be diminished by communications delays between the cloud and local device. So who needs to go back to school, huh?
$500M went directly into their used game tracking program, $100M went into the new box designs/logo, $300M went into servers, $60M went to develop the Halo franchise and $40 went into other games/mainly focused on the Kinect 2
"It's also been stated that the Xbox One is 10 times more powerful than the Xbox 360, so we're effectively 40 times greater than the Xbox 360 in terms of processing capabilities [using the cloud].
Good thing they put a math expert out there to sell the X1. MS better hope he isn't the same guy that's telling them they can sell 1 billion X1s.
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