"Death of a game: The Secret World" by nerdSlayer

Does it have an actual argument for why it is better to initially discourage multiple characters as opposed to encourage them, in a game that is unique enough for the second and third play-through that might help retention? Like, say, actual evidence that this is the better long-term monetization approach? I mean, it is better short-term, but unless it wants to prove itself a fool by arguing having nothing but a short-term plan is the best way to ensure long-term success, that is quite irrelevant.

It loves demanding evidence, so it really should show it posses some semblance of character by occasionally supplying some itself.

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Don’t waste your time trying to reason with it.

Those are essentially the points I was making, too. I’m not claiming any sort of plagiarism; you probably didn’t even read my post and came to the same conclusions about the game because those are pretty obvious points. It’s too bad Funcom couldn’t see it coming, or, rather, didn’t care.

I do agree with your point that story content is harder to make, but I disagree that lowering the quality of the cutscenes would be a good strategy. Look at SA. It’s so painfully weak compared to the other zones and a lot of that is how poor the cutscenes are. I think a lot of players lost hope once they saw it.

It goes back to my point about SWL being a half-hearted attempt at a relaunch. The combat system can’t be saved without overhauling it to the point of basically creating a new system. More end-game content from TSW (Dungeons, raids, PvP) isn’t likely to be ported over. So basically, the only hope left is new story content, and in order to really save the game, the next zone has to be a huge step up in terms of quality. Another meh zone isn’t going to bring many people back, and the few people who do come back will only stick around for as long as it takes to play through it once.

Why would I have an actual argument to support a position you literally just concocted wholesale from thin air? All I did was point out the overly dramatic linguistic flourish you used to turn the mundane “business charges for something” into the sinister “business monetizes the hell out of something”.

Citation needed. :v:

Oh, I didn’t say it would. On the contrary, I was expecting it to once again display its lack of character by way of some absurd pretense it totally doesn’t need one. It delivered.

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I figured I’d try and see if there’s any reasoning given, but all I can find from my limited google-fu is hearsay. The only people who know why Funcom didn’t give multiple character slots by default (barring the 2 free ones for TSW linked accounts at the first Legacy Transfer) are Funcom themselves. Presumably, at the time it was thought to be an economically viable route with the information they had, and to change that now would either cause a controversy or else remain non-viable, or they would have presumably done it by now.
If you haven’t done so already, add it to https://forums.funcom.com/t/feedback-suggestions/

Reading through FAQ - Secret World Legends no reasoning is given as to why, but merely a statement of fact:

How many characters do I get on my account?
Each account has access to one character slot. Additional character slots may be purchased in game.
Players that used the original TSW Legacy Transfer service on or before September 4th, 2017 will have three total character slots. The Legacy Transfer service no longer grants additional character slots. Read here for details.

Though I did find one of the web results from trying to search for a reason includes Meta-Moth’s post from May 2018 Extra Char Slots NOT available - #17 by Starsmith, in which he gives the excellent summary:

I have no verds

https://zippy.gfycat.com/WearyImmaculateGelada.webm

As one person states underneath that:

From the seller’s - i.e. Funcom’s - perspective, which unlike [Meta-Moth’s] is actually relevant to the question of whether said seller would be losing anything, any Aurum item really is a cash only item [in this case referring to free character slots].
They may not care whether the person spending the cash and the person getting the item are one and the same, but the item is not going anywhere without somebody having spent cash. And therefore they’d be (potentially) losing cash by giving it away that item for free.

Yes, I remember. I never said they aren’t losing more by not properly encouraging new players to run alts. I think they probably are, but Funcom clearly didn’t think they would when they made the one slot decision.

Eh, Kotaku’s “investigation” reads like a hit piece requested by JS’s buddies from Bioware Austin.

A new zone, even if on a par with Solomon Island, is not going to bring the people back who left because of what Funcom did to the game and the combat system. Like I said before, I come here once in a while out of nostalgia, and I have the TSW GM, but I deleted the game some time ago, and even after S.A. was released, I had no inkling of coming back. Although I do still log into TSW once in a while.

And it its current state, SWL is not going to pull in any more new people. This is what you got. That’s it. It’s been only downhill for a while.

Actually, a new zone, i.e. a major content update, would be likely to bring in new players. I see it in other F2P games, it always happens. The question is whether those new players can be moved to stick around, and I cannot possibly imagine SWL would have better conversion rates than the lackluster ones I see elsewhere.

Just about anything added to the game brings players back. They don’t often stick around for long after they’ve checked out the new stuff but that’s the great unsolvable problem of live-service games, isn’t it?

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You may see it in other games, but I doubt a new zone in SWL would bring new players, unless the new zone completely ignores game progression, since to get to that new zone, a new player would have to play the entirety of the old game.

It may bring some old players back to take a look-see, but they are not going to return to the game, or spend money, in any significant fashion. Players like me, they surely aren’t even taking the look-see in game. I took to youtube to check out S.A. when it came out.

SA had I believe a pretty strong uptick in people that calmed down once people layed through it. Some even accelerated their progression through the game to see SA if I remember right.
Than again in all MMOs a Expansion of sort brings new players that quitely fade over time. True for SWL as it is for giants like GW2 or WoW.

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Sadly, I think you’re right, and Funcom knows this. A new zone won’t significantly increase the amount of playres, especially not on a long-term basis. Looking at the steam charts (the only reference we have) The player numbers dropped significantly soon after launch and there was only a small, brief uptick after SA was released. That’s why we’re unlikely to see another major content update for a while. We just get little bits here and there to slow down the decay of the player base. And the new stuff we get is designed more for adding play time to the game than for enjoyable experience.

I think that’s why there’s been a bigger push of late to get the other dungeons and raids ported over to SWL. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m only barely hanging on to the game, and then only because of the group content. There’s still a lot of good people playing the game, and it’s fun to do stuff together. However, the end-game content is severely lacking.

I do think fixing the combat system would be more productive in bringing people back to the game, but it would be near impossible at this point. I started playing SWL about a year ago and even back then I kept hearing rumors that they were about to nerf sustain tanking so that healing would be a thing again. Here we are a year later, and nothing. So I don’t know if those rumors were lies, or if the project was abandoned because it was too hard/cost-prohibitive.

New players won’t know new content is an incessant grind away. That’s a contributing factor why I really don’t think SWL would manage to retain well.

The words “in any significant fashion” are doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. :v:

Well, yes. So?

SWL combat system is unfixable imho, it is even far more flawed than TSW one. And even if there would be any “fix”, it would bring almost zero new players if there would not be any new content.

I really don’t want to sound negative only, but I have not much faith in future game. I don’t believe we will ever see Congo. Instead of it we can hope in some small updates of stuff they left unfinished in TSW past etc.

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It actually reads like “top 10 reasons IT projects fail”. Generic in its failings. The reason I quote it is because it is similar to TSW/SWL where the original designers were story-oriented, and struggled with making the gameplay work within a multi-player environment. If a AAA team with 7 years and a 10’s of millions of $$$ couldn’t make it work, then imagine the difficulty for Funcom.