Thrax: Where's the masses?

The point IM making (and so is PJ, to some extent), is that if you are making a game SOLELY to appease the hardcore competitive players, then you are really doing the game and the players a disservice.

A large fanbase gets the ball rolling, makes for good press, gets the word of mouth out there. If the competitive playerbase, who apparently HATED T2, were SO important and SO revered and SO necessary, then how is it that there seemed to be SO many people playing T2? :huh: You want so much to say that T2 was SUCH a failure, but goddamn there sure were a LOT of maps, mods, and servers to play on. For a SOLID YEAR I did NOTHING, played almost NO other games when T2 came out. T1 was a LOT of fun for me, but with the addition of the community features I got to actually join a few teams, play a few scrims, but I was never a diehard league player, and really neither were my teammates. We just enjoyed the *gasp* SOCIAL aspect of the game, the teamwork and just chillin with yer buds and rackin up a few kills/caps.

THAT sort of laid back attitude, coupled with slowly gaining skills and learning new techniques and tactics was the constant draw. T1 had that as well, but T2 (after they fixed the floaty physics a bit) was more "Epic" in that sense *cringes as the flames start*

Face this fact: NO Tribes game is going to survive SOLEY on the merits of the leagues and competitive players... Sorry, there are simply NOT ENOUGH of them to justify making a game. And conversely, a game that LACKS the support of the competitive players loses direction quickly.

Casual players are the pool from which you create the "pro" players, NOT the other way around! And CASUAL players are the ones who the game HAS to attract right off the bat, because ESPECIALLY with an "iffy" game like T:V, with such marvelous support for tournament mode and teams (/sarcasm) you NEED to keep people playing it to keep the momentum going.

Vengeance didnt have that kind of momentum. At some point Guy Welch pointed out that over a quarter MILLION downloads of the demos were recorded off FILEPLANET ALONE and there were OTHER distribution channels. You are going to tell me that nobody's heard of this game? Ive already stated a more likely scenario, and its the one that makes the MOST sense and fits all the actual FACTS we have here. People just didnt like the game off the bat, and no amount of "well you are just badmouthing this game" is going to change that.

Also, I have gone a total of TWO places where I have voiced ANY displeasure with T:V... HERE and the VUG forums. So Im only reaching the 200-odd people that actually bother to READ what I write. I dunno if PJ is spamming the net with "T:V is a festering pile of shit" or something, but I havent tried to stop anyone from buying it (it IS a good single player game IMHO). So I fail to understand why it is people seem to think Im "harming" a franchise when im basically just talking to a bunch of Tribes 1/2/V fanboys :wave:
 
Wolfchylde said:
Face this fact: NO Tribes game is going to survive SOLEY on the merits of the leagues and competitive players... Sorry, there are simply NOT ENOUGH of them to justify making a game. And conversely, a game that LACKS the support of the competitive players loses direction quickly.

Casual players are the pool from which you create the "pro" players, NOT the other way around! And CASUAL players are the ones who the game HAS to attract right off the bat, because ESPECIALLY with an "iffy" game like T:V, with such marvelous support for tournament mode and teams (/sarcasm) you NEED to keep people playing it to keep the momentum going.
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You people have no clue what you're talking about. What do you know about the gaming industry honestly? What evidence do you have to support this opinion?

I at least showed proof to back up my arguments. If you want to convince me, then show me this is true.

I don't pretend to be any kind of expert. I know next to nothing about how sales and numbers like this work 'cept for having taken a business 101 course.
But I at least back up my argument with facts.

You and PJ just seem to say "This is the way it is because it is." It's not convincing. I'm getting tired of reading the same regurgitated argument by multiple people with nothing that backs it up.
 
|CO|Kapeket!! said:
TV is a great game.

Thanks for shopping VUG though. I do blame alot of people but where is Chris? Where is this legend we all gazed at during press conferences? At TW West? Someone tell me where the real meat of this game and its direction are.

He is right, but even with all that, this game is a blast. Try playing it without the whole "I need a 12 step program to get over my addiction to a game that is 6 years old" attitude.

Actually try playing it sometime. We all are.
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I <3 you.
 
Flatscan said:
PJ you're a loon.

Competitive players form the core nucleus from which a game develops. If you don't have them, a game dies quickly.
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Wrong and...

The Pumpkin King said:
Dude, you're totally right. Who wants extremely dedicated hardcore players going out and spreading the word about your favorite game? That's a nightmare for any developer and fanbase I'm sure.
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Sure developers like having a dedicated base of players but any smart (the keyword here being smart) will never rely on that small dedicated base of players dictate the direction a game design does. The developer has to view the big picture in deciding what will bring in the most players while retaining the core of past games. The core is a part of what the game was about and not an exact or even very close approximation.

There will never be enough dedicated fans of a particular franchise, except for Half-Life and they could change the game 100% and still have a huge assed following, to make any real difference in the popularity of a game to the MASSES of potential game players. That is what you and others going on about this fail to understand. You only see things from the viewpoint of what makes YOU happy and not from a wider viewpoint of what makes the majority happy and coming back to play a game. Competition has never been a big factor in how popular an online game happens to be and probably never will.

The only thing that matters to Average Joe Gamer is this game fun for me to play and not "Do dedicated competition players like it.".
 
The Pumpkin King said:
You people have no clue what you're talking about. What do you know about the gaming industry honestly? What evidence do you have to support this opinion?
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I have been writing games and other things in the industry since the early 1980's. I have been in competition in some form since then. The first team I was on and in competition for was Quakeworld. Hell, I have probably been involved in the gaming industry in some form for longer than some of the people bashing me have been alive. :razz:
 
[AKA]PanamaJack said:
Competition has never been a big factor in how popular an online game happens to be and probably never will.

The only thing that matters to Average Joe Gamer is this game fun for me to play and not "Do dedicated competition players like it.".
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You've previously said that all 'Average Joe Gamer' wants to do is jump on a server and kill stuff. So which is it? Like games that are designed from the ground up to be competitive(notice I did not say the SOLELY for competitive gamers, you guys are the ones saying that) can't be about jumping in a server and killing stuff?

I have always said that if you make a good game that the competitive community can grab right away, the rest will follow. No one here is saying to make the game SOLELY for ladderplay, only that if you design a good game from the ground up to be played competitively, with features to match(working demos, admin functions, working tourney modes, complete gamemodes- all things T:V lacks), the casual gamers can enjoy it as well. Making a game with the competitive community in mind does NOT mean casual players can't play it. It's not like you need secret codes to play.

As to your "Competition has never been a big factor in how popular an online game happens to be and probably never will," statement, you couldn't be more wrong. If you're going to pull 'facts' out of your ass, please back them up.
 
Having a dedicated and competitive core community does help drive up player counts. Perhaps not so much from the presence of ladders, but rather by the display of skill shown by the experienced players. When I first played T1, I got my ass kicked. Then I saw a player skiing. Amazed by what I had witnessed, I asked him, "How do you move so fast?" to which he replied, "Magic." Not quite the answer I sought, but merely seeing him ski across Raindance compelled me to continue playing until I could do the same. Throughout my few years of playing, there were numerous players who I aspired to match. I would try to learn from them and eventually surpass them and that was a driving force for me. Tribes 2 and T:V lacked this feeling. Perhaps it was the lack of a steep learning curve that made the games more boring, but I never had as much fun in either game as I did in T1. I bought and played T2 out of dedication to my clan. However, T2 base eventually brought me no joy whatsoever and I resigned from my clan and T2. I returned a year or so later and got into T2 Classic, which was a great deal more enjoyable than Base, but nowhere near as entertaining as T1.

As for T:V... well, I can't say that it has much appeal to me. Where T2 focused too much on D, T:V focuses too much on O, much to my detriment, since I've always played LD. Aside from the incredibly annoying vehicles and grapplers, the game fails to evoke any feeling from me. It feels hollow. Does this mean that T:V killed Tribes? That depends on what element of Tribes you are talking about. From a financial perspective, yes, T:V has killed Tribes because it sold like crap and I highly, highly doubt there will be a sequel. From a Tribes 1 community standpoint, T2 killed Tribes. About 95% of T1 players were disgusted by T2 and left as a result. However, T2 also brought in some new players. Not much of a community, but there were a few servers that were packed, even a few years after the game's original release.

Anyway, to sum up:
1) A dedicated, competitive player base gives new players something to aspire to.
2) Financially, T:V killed Tribes. Community-wise, T2 killed the T1 community base and created a small T2 player base. T:V appears to have killed both.
3) This post has a lot of tangents and for that I apologize. I like to reminisce about the good ol' days.
 
It's really about the careful balance of pleasing two groups of people at once. Your average newb doesn't even know what is going on competitively let alone care about it. They are on the server for one reason, to have fun, not just fun but easy instant fun. Look at BF1942, it was a disaster competiively when it was first released. We had to reboot the server just to change the map. Did this hurt the game? No, it was still the second most popular fps in the world after counter strike. All the newbs who rewarded them with amazing sales figures cared about was hopping in all those different vehicles and driving around. Once you have a gameplay design that can inspire the masses then you can get to pleasing the competitive community. Certainly the money tournaments that CS has now inspires people to play that game even though 99% of its players know deep down they have no chance to win any money. But it wasn't that way to start. The inspiring gameplay came first, then the competition.

Any future developer must realize that this is not a CPL bound franchise, there are just too many players involved. Sure we can have some one time deal tournaments if the game is very popular or a reward system like we had in T2/twl but the game has to have that large community to make that all happen. Thrax gave it the best shot with his hope of 7v7, however teams that small was just a turn off.
 
[AKA]PanamaJack said:
Wrong and...



Sure developers like having a dedicated base of players but any smart (the keyword here being smart) will never rely on that small dedicated base of players dictate the direction a game design does. The developer has to view the big picture in deciding what will bring in the most players while retaining the core of past games. The core is a part of what the game was about and not an exact or even very close approximation.

There will never be enough dedicated fans of a particular franchise, except for Half-Life and they could change the game 100% and still have a huge assed following, to make any real difference in the popularity of a game to the MASSES of potential game players. That is what you and others going on about this fail to understand. You only see things from the viewpoint of what makes YOU happy and not from a wider viewpoint of what makes the majority happy and coming back to play a game. Competition has never been a big factor in how popular an online game happens to be and probably never will.

The only thing that matters to Average Joe Gamer is this game fun for me to play and not "Do dedicated competition players like it.".
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One sentence summary: gaming companies market their product to a mass audience in attempt to make a maximum profit.

Thank you for posting the same thing you posted the last 3 posts. I believe even the thickest of us tools can comprehend mass marketing thanks.

p.s. you're still wrong about competition and haven't proved otherwise.
 
T2 was good game but not good enough to justify the hype it had, that is why it lost all the players it had. Commercial success maybe, but still a failure. Vehicles were the best ones seen in any Tribes game, which did bring many new players to the game.

T2 with Classic and all the other community addons and fixes was one of the best games ever. If only T2 would have been like that from day one, T2 player numbers would still be high for sure. Also community would not have splitted up twice like it did because of T2b.

T:V was also a good game (really good SP), but the MP game was even bigger failure than T2 because it didnt reach the standards set by T1 and T2. The biggest mistake of T:V devs was to underestimate the players and community. With lack of hype and marketing you cant pick up release date any worse than they did. WoW alone is a game killer.

T1. Oldest game of the three and all you need is skiing patch/script and you can fully enjoy the game even with standard maps. Gameplay beats crap out of T2/T:V.
 
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None of the 3 tribes game was ever popular....why do people keep arguing about stuff related to that?

Just because a shitload of people try a game and then uninstall it after a month or 2 because they cant do the things they want to do (DM), doesnt make it a popular game.
I've rarely seen a DM server in Tribes with alot of players on...if any at all.
Tribes is based on teamplay and usually CTF, a gamestyle thats not popular in ANY game.
The typical player wants to enter a game and be a pointwhore.

Nomatter how good or bad you make Tribes, it will NEVER have a big fanbase.
The concept of Tribes, nomatter how good we think it is, wont appeal to the majority.
It takes too long to learn, and you depend on everybody else to succeed.
Even reviewers has written that Tribes is owned by the community, if the community dont like the game, it will fail.

VUG took a chance when they went away from the basics in tribes, and this is what they got.
They wanted to make a game for the majority, a game based on a gameplay the majority dont like.

They finally forced the community to take over Tribes and fix their fuckups...again
 
Vir said:
It's really about the careful balance of pleasing two groups of people at once. Your average newb doesn't even know what is going on competitively let alone care about it. They are on the server for one reason, to have fun, not just fun but easy instant fun. Look at BF1942, it was a disaster competiively when it was first released. We had to reboot the server just to change the map. Did this hurt the game? No, it was still the second most popular fps in the world after counter strike. All the newbs who rewarded them with amazing sales figures cared about was hopping in all those different vehicles and driving around. Once you have a gameplay design that can inspire the masses then you can get to pleasing the competitive community. Certainly the money tournaments that CS has now inspires people to play that game even though 99% of its players know deep down they have no chance to win any money. But it wasn't that way to start. The inspiring gameplay came first, then the competition.
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I agree, however you also have to factor in developer support. I remember when bf42 was released and yeah it was a disaster. However they were many offical servers upon release - for t:v i believe there were none (until a week or so after release)...and then the developers went pretty much silent. not even a peep. my sig says it all.

(bf1942 also had the whole WWII thing going for it, which almost guarentees it to be a huge seller....thats why there are so many WWII games out now. I even know of games that have included WWII time periods, soley for the reason that it sells games)

But really, I still think the single player is what hurt T:V multiplayer the most. While being quite good, I think that T:V actually did alright in sales - its just that many people who picked it up only played the single player....

had t:v been multiplayer only , we would see many more people on the servers. Of course it would have been a better game as well since they wouldn't have spent resources on developing the single player. tribes should never have been made into a single player game, it was never about that. if they wanted a single player game, they should have just stuck to starseige.
 
Got Haggis? said:
I agree, however you also have to factor in developer support. I remember when bf42 was released and yeah it was a disaster. However they were many offical servers upon release - for t:v i believe there were none (until a week or so after release)...and then the developers went pretty much silent. not even a peep. my sig says it all.

(bf1942 also had the whole WWII thing going for it, which almost guarentees it to be a huge seller....thats why there are so many WWII games out now. I even know of games that have included WWII time periods, soley for the reason that it sells games)

But really, I still think the single player is what hurt T:V multiplayer the most. While being quite good, I think that T:V actually did alright in sales - its just that many people who picked it up only played the single player....

had t:v been multiplayer only , we would see many more people on the servers. Of course it would have been a better game as well since they wouldn't have spent resources on developing the single player. tribes should never have been made into a single player game, it was never about that. if they wanted a single player game, they should have just stuck to starseige.
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Sadly I have to agree with you on that last part. As much as I DID enjoy the SP aspect of the game, the obvious focus on that diverted attention from the MP aspect, and thats why the game didnt jive with a lot of people.

Taken SOLEY by itself, regardless of the previous franchise titles, T:V is just an 'okay' game at best. As a MP game tho when compared to the previous titles? Its downright awful :(
 
The Pumpkin King said:
You people have no clue what you're talking about. What do you know about the gaming industry honestly? What evidence do you have to support this opinion?

I at least showed proof to back up my arguments. If you want to convince me, then show me this is true.

I don't pretend to be any kind of expert. I know next to nothing about how sales and numbers like this work 'cept for having taken a business 101 course.
But I at least back up my argument with facts.

You and PJ just seem to say "This is the way it is because it is." It's not convincing. I'm getting tired of reading the same regurgitated argument by multiple people with nothing that backs it up.
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Facts?

Oh geez, you act as tho Im supposed to dredge up some sort of numbers game to make you happy? Sorry, I base my statements on gaming experiences Ive had since I STARTED playing games online.

Also, consider this: During the heyday of T2, for every one person you had that had a clan tag, you had about 5 or 6 people who didnt. Now "competitive" players in T1 and T2 were all ABOUT their tag(s). This was just how it was for a LONG time. People repeatedly want to fault T2 as being this huge failure, but BOY was it a popular one. And even with the UE's, the master server list going down, the community being borked more often than not, and the flaky Irc/email, people STILL PLAYED IT IN DROVES FOR OVER A YEAR! Most of whom never seemed to join (or stick with) a team.

The problem with those who espouse the 'competitive' angle in games is that they seem to forget that not everyone has the time or the energy TO compete. Thats the whole "casual gamer" thing. Leagues and tournaments can be a HUGE hassle, and since more and more of the gaming populace are in our late 20's to early 30's, we cant devote that kind of time to it. :shrug: And I have noted, that a LOT (not all, certainly) of the "l33t" players didnt mingle with 'the common folk' and are whiney bitches when it comes to actually pubbing because people dont play they way THEY want them to. A LOT of competitive players are elitest snobs who look down their nose at anyone who sullies himself by pubbing a lot. Tribes was the only online MP game I stuck with (aside from MMORPGS), since most other MP online games DO bore the shit out of me, and that was DESPITE this attitude. *sigh*

Realistically, if not for some of the more severe flaws in T:V, I would be happy as hell to be playing it, but some of these flaws are beyond the scope of the community to fix :mecry: you can mod it to hell and back and you wont fix the netcode, I cant see how you could fix the inventory system (I still say that they made some impossibly stupid choices with THAT implementation), and be honest, do you think that if they just fixed the tournament system and some admin stuff people would flock back? The game itself simply doesnt do anything to surpass its predecessors... seriously, what does T:V do better than T1 or T2? Graphics? Big friggin deal! Physics? Probably the only thing they did okay with. Weapons? Nope. Gameplay? Nothing really special (and everything that WAS special is largely ignored). Balance? We went from one extreme in T2 to the other in T:V... wooonderful :rolleyes:

Simple fact: Tribes: Vengeance had potential, but somewhere along the line people made some very very poor choices (mostly by, in theory listening to the "competitive community" :lol: such bullshit*), and the developers rushed it to market at the behest of a mega corperation that REALLY could give a shit about the franchise (dont even TRY to tell me that VUG cares about Tribes). So now we are stuck with a game that's broken, and a fanbase of die hard players (all hundred of you) who bitch and moan cuz we're not being supportive.

:shrugh: whatever.

*I say that because they listened to a small faction of players, most of whom hated T2, and then VUG went and ignored them anyways half the time. So the T2 fans were ignored, the T1 fans were given lip service, and then VUG and IG did what they wanted anyways. :lol: I tell you, VUG and IG dont seem to "get" Tribes, I REALLY wish it were within my power to actually remake this game *sigh*
 
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