Full Loot PvP- MO's Curse or Blessing?

[Godkin Veratas]

I saw a post by @Sebastian Persson on Reddit found here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/9glyer/_/e655xi5
Wherein he is plainly discussing the challenges of making a full loot PvP game. Seb gives a lot of really sound reasons for MOs lack of popularity and success, I commend him for his honesty and introspection. Then he added, with some subtle hesitation I think, that the market for Full Loot PvP games isn't that large and not a great niche for making money. My first reaction was, that's a load of horseshit. Then I thought about it with respect for my apparent bias for hardcore games. Are Full Loot PvP games really rare? Is it a small niche destined for marginal communities and failure, or was my gut right; Seb isn't accepting that MO isn't pulling it off the basic level that can allow those interested to enjoy the experience. I am definitely not in the "modern gamer" niche as people describe it, I don't like themeparks, fps (other than Battlefield 2 and 3), or Royale games, I will not be downloading Kitten'd. Yet, I see games like Dayz, Ark, Rust, Conan, Eve, Albion, LiF and more games in the pipeline, with full-loot pvp as a prominent feature, making money and with substantial populations. Even fortnite has full loot, minus the grind.

I bring this up because I may be wrong, but if I'm right, that it's not the core concept of full-loot pvp turning people off, that it's the implementation and the thousands of other reasons people cite as for not playing MO, then the belief is self-limiting. Expectations for what this game could be are lowered. Is it a rationalization for the failure, or are there really only a thousand people in the world truly interested in a full loot pvp game like MO?

Is the insecurity about the core concept making Seb limit his thinking about what people will tolerate and what people actually want to experience? He cites thievery and planting items, issues that would have been mostly moot if the blue flag, stolen items changes were implemented, as this is a guarded town activity. What other features have been hacked to bits or mangled with compromise in an attempted appeal to these "modern gamers"? How many man hours will be spent wasted creating a carebear zone that may only further weaken the vision? A half measure away from full-loot pvp is definitely a core concept of the newb island perhaps revealing this insecurity in the most profound way.

I think Full loot PVP might have been a blessing to this company. From a business development standpoint, having a unique take on an MMORPG is probably what has allowed SV the success it has achieved. Take that same money, time, and manpower and attempt a Themepark. I imagine the hardcore dedicated fans would have never existed and servers would be down after 6 months. I wish they would be more proud of what they have attempted wtih MO, and I think it could be the great full loot pvp game that we all want to see, and it doesn't need to soften the full loot, it needs to polish and perfect the PvP and PvE.

Am I wrong?

 

[Jatix]

Ya although full loot open pvp is one of the easiest way to make nubs quit, its the main reason a lot of us are here. If MO wasnt so open and free it would just be a bad runescape clone or something. So it really needs to stay true to being hardcore.

That being said theres ways to help nubs have fun and progress to try and make a larger % of them stay without taking away from what make MO MO. And thats what they should be focusing on. Which is kinda the point in the new island at least, so at least they kinda have a good goal.

MO will never be able to have a massive retention rate, its just not how hardcore games work. Even runescape does this thing every few months called deadman mode. and its open pvp runescape from scratch for like a month. And the player population literally tanks day 1. But liek Seb said most people arnt really cut out for hardcore. But thats ok because gaming is massive and we only need a couple hundred on at any given time to make MO really flourish. So even keeping double the crap amount we retain now would add up quickly I would think.

 

[DemBeansBruh]

People like Full loot, or like the concept of it. There's tonnes of full loot games out there, from survival apocalypse games(DayZ), to smaller scale partial MMO's(Rust) etc The main difference between these games and MO, is the time it takes to progress and establish yourself. It's a lot more unforgiving with Mortal.

In MO, acquiring wealth and establishing yourself is quite time consuming. In these other games, you can snowball quite easily and establish yourself on day 1, and losing everything isn't a big deal - due to the the games design and overall time commitment required to get to end game. But with MO, one silly mistake like pulling out materials, gold etc in the wrong place can seriously screw you, in terms of progression and time it took to get to where you were.

It's both a blessing and a curse. A blessing that MO hit a certain niche that we can enjoy, but it also limits who will play the game, because people do get really upset at losing pixels - especially when it can take a long time to obtain them.

In saying this, MO could work on lowering the time sink aspect a bit, it can be quite tedious in certain areas.

 

[Bicorps]

100% agree with you. We would not be there if it was not Full Loot PvP Sandbox Openworld. The problem is the quality of the product.
A lot people get interested into MO but uninstall it after they see the bad facet of the game.

and to talk about carebear guard.... a lot people get bored really quick with the siege. Guards attack true wall and kill mangs in 1minute that cost 350g minimum and we dont talk about the time we spend on all the logistic.

The fact pet was getting stuck on every nodline at steam release was unacceptable too ..

Anyways... I feel we could talk about this another 10 years and StarVault gonna do nothing about it so .... they aiming for a Carebear Mortal online.

 

[Sebastian Persson]

Hope I don't get into trouble for this..

 

[Godkin Veratas]

Hope I don't get into trouble for this..

You have quite the sense of humor, it's enjoyable, and a bit confusing. I wonder if you ask yourself why you respond with humor to this post?

 

[Speznat]

Unimportant SHIT:
I see also the problem with the time sink.

Time sinks are okay if they feel reasonable, but most aktivities in MO dont feel worth the pain/time.
Second are people that install see the graphics and going straight out.
Third people searching for a game like mortal, they feel lost, they dont know what mortal have to offer in content, they see tindrem / the assets and placed stuff and edgy poligons and npcs that wlak in each other and leave.

IMPORTANT
Dont know maybe fixing things like that could help:
- NPC's that dont walk in each other, more varieties of Tindrem NPC's.
- Ice Cold desert at night would be realistic. (I mean wich desert have 42C at night come on)
- More epic feeling is in Tindrem needed.
- Push an epic intro movie like the first trailer with mortals history background at the noobs faces that they have to watch a 2min video of Mortals Lore History.
- Make mortal Squarespace shit domain to a real domain again come on.
- npcs have day and night cycles
- make much tindrem houses in tindrem and some other cities rentable and decoratable.
- DirectX 11 give extrem good colors and adds a other feeling to mortal, but it often crashes fix it.
- Visualise a little bit more, eyecandy attracts and hold people.
- some pve feels hardcore unbalanced, at foot nearly every bigger sarducca monster ist not possible to kill. without attack reheal and doing this for 30mins while mounted asshole can fuck the thing in 30seconds.

 

[Godkin Veratas]

Unimportant SHIT:
I see also the problem with the time sink.

Time sinks are okay if they feel reasonable, but most aktivities in MO dont feel worth the pain/time.
Second are people that install see the graphics and going straight out.
Third people searching for a game like mortal, they feel lost, they dont know what mortal have to offer in content, they see tindrem / the assets and placed stuff and edgy poligons and npcs that wlak in each other and leave.

IMPORTANT
Dont know maybe fixing things like that could help:
- NPC's that dont walk in each other, more varieties of Tindrem NPC's.
- Ice Cold desert at night would be realistic. (I mean wich desert have 42C at night come on)
- More epic feeling is in Tindrem needed.
- Push an epic intro movie like the first trailer with mortals history background at the noobs faces that they have to watch a 2min video of Mortals Lore History.
- Make mortal Squarespace shit domain to a real domain again come on.
- npcs have day and night cycles
- make much tindrem houses in tindrem and some other cities rentable and decoratable.
- DirectX 11 give extrem good colors and adds a other feeling to mortal, but it often crashes fix it.
- Visualise a little bit more, eyecandy attracts and hold people.
- some pve feels hardcore unbalanced, at foot nearly every bigger sarducca monster ist not possible to kill. without attack reheal and doing this for 30mins while mounted asshole can fuck the thing in 30seconds.

Perhaps you've posted this on the wrong thread.

 

[Godkin Veratas]

Ya although full loot open pvp is one of the easiest way to make nubs quit, its the main reason a lot of us are here. If MO wasnt so open and free it would just be a bad runescape clone or something. So it really needs to stay true to being hardcore.

That being said theres ways to help nubs have fun and progress to try and make a larger % of them stay without taking away from what make MO MO. And thats what they should be focusing on. Which is kinda the point in the new island at least, so at least they kinda have a good goal.

MO will never be able to have a massive retention rate, its just not how hardcore games work. Even runescape does this thing every few months called deadman mode. and its open pvp runescape from scratch for like a month. And the player population literally tanks day 1. But liek Seb said most people arnt really cut out for hardcore. But thats ok because gaming is massive and we only need a couple hundred on at any given time to make MO really flourish. So even keeping double the crap amount we retain now would add up quickly I would think.

So hardcore full loot pvp games like ark, rust, dayz, Conan, Albion, Eve, don't have good retention rates? It's simply a nature of the full loot, that's your view?

 

[Aesorn]

Of course full-loot creates a much more niche market, especially when it's permanent loss unlike a "full-loot" royale game like Fortnite. Though there's tons of people who would enjoy a full-loot mmo. I think Seb listed plenty of other reasons why MO is where it is, and all of us could make a laundry list ourselves of the problems of its past and present.

Though even the people who hate on this game all the time at least could always see the potential. MO is the best example of a "diamond in the rough" metaphor imo. SV please add whatever you think MO actually needs to succeed to it and make a final hard advertising / steam push. Take your time and do w/e you need to but finish the damn game... you need one last final high effort hustle to the finish line to have any chance to win the race.

 

[Najwalaylah]

Full-loot PvP isn't *the* problem, in my opinion. It's probably not even *a* problem on the scale of many others the game has. It's a definite draw that probably keeps a lot of folks playing for longer than they otherwise would.

All games equate to time spent; MO seems to be synonymous in a lot of people's minds with 'time wasted'. SV has this reputation of its own for wasting players' time, and then on top of that it's proven to be very easy for other players to waste a player's time. A sane degree of the latter might be necessary in order to have a somewhat hard-core game. The former, though, is pure poison.

As customers, too, people get tired of waiting for things that take place 'alongside' or outside of game play. Many of us who've been here for nine or ten years have seen the same good suggestions come up multiple times, finally to be taken years too late or in some unsatisfying way if at all. The lore has many times kind of evaporated, then taken off in some new direction only to peter out once more. Some very old bugs have gotten fixed, it's true; but, some (like the recently re-mentioned sidewalk jam by the bank in Fabernum) are still around. Fixes to things that aren't broken have happened, instead of fixes to things that were or still are. Some systems are over-complicated, some are boring, and some are (astonishingly) both. Support is hard to come by, on a consistent basis, in a timely fashion (sometimes, it has been quick! But you just *know* some folks logged out for the last time while still waiting).

@DemBeansBruh probably put his finger on a large part of the suck when he talked about time consumption vs. progression.

Over time, enthusiasm wanes under this burden of history. Maybe no one thing is all that bad, but it all adds up. Games *can* have a lifespan, and Mortal Online just seems old and tired. MortalRoyale is the new kid who makes the contrast sharper.

#HistoryMatters

Spoiler

At one time I added nearly everyone who ever streamed MO-- and of course, that wasn't everyone who played-- over Twitch. I think I still follow nearly all of them. I see like one or two occasionally still playing it. Most of those streamers have moved on. It's kind of bleak. (Granted that YouTube would probably be a better source.)

I don't think, from the variety of other games that these folks play, that they prefer softer, gentler, easier, less PvP games. It must be something else. I don't have the desire to gather the statistics on this, but someone could.

 

[Godkin Veratas]

Of course full-loot creates a much more niche market, especially when it's permanent loss unlike a "full-loot" royale game like Fortnite. Though there's tons of people who would enjoy a full-loot mmo. I think Seb listed plenty of other reasons why MO is where it is, and all of us could make a laundry list ourselves of the problems of its past and present.

Though even the people who hate on this game all the time at least could always see the potential. MO is the best example of a "diamond in the rough" metaphor imo. SV please add whatever you think MO actually needs to succeed to it and make a final hard advertising / steam push. Take your time and do w/e you need to but finish the damn game... you need one last final high effort hustle to the finish line to have any chance to win the race.

All fair points. However, doing whatever it takes to make the game succeed is clearly impacted by beliefs about what type of game can succeed. Suggesting that one can't make a lot of money due to the core concept being full loot, I suspect that's bullshit reasoning that ignores plenty of counter examples. Moreover, the hard thing is polishing the game, the easy thing is blaming the concept and "modern gamers" lack of interest. I could be wrong. In the end, of course we get SVs best effort, reflection and challenging assumptions is good business practice.

 

[Yeonan]

All fair points. However, doing whatever it takes to make the game succeed is clearly impacted by beliefs about what type of game can succeed. Suggesting that one can't make a lot of money due to the core concept being full loot, I suspect that's bullshit reasoning that ignores plenty of counter examples. Moreover, the hard thing is polishing the game, the easy thing is blaming the concept and "modern gamers" lack of interest. I could be wrong. In the end, of course we get SVs best effort, reflection and challenging assumptions is good business practice.

I would look to other popular games as an indication of how popular full-loot pvp games are as well as where they fall on the spectrum of time investment vs potential loss.

The most popular games dont have any where near full-loot mechanics. Simply a small repair bill or some other triviality.

Even considering other full-loot games as others alluded to, the investment vs loss ratio doesnt approach that of MO.

Surely there are design flaws, as with any game, that contribute negatively to the retention rate. But i dont assume that is the primary reason.

If we look at recent financial reports of SV they mention a figure of 500,000 unique downloads.

Are we prepared to say that such a small portion stay simply because of bad design and not because of the harsh nature of the game?

I think seb is spot on when he says many people think they want ultra hardcore but when they experience it, often times they dont.

Whats more likely to make a new player quit today:

Losing their 10g set of gear that took them 2 hours to save up for because of senseless murder.

Or, losing a set of gear deep in the sator dungeon because a mage bugged in the walls and wiped the group?

The first example is that of a player who most likely has minimal investment in the game so instead of grinding for another couple hours they decide they'll go play something else which offers a fun experience for their precious time.

The second example is almost always going to be a person who has more time invested, along with the knowledge and resources built up to know that 20g suit they just lost is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Before the breach Henrik had mentioned in public discord that they had 80 new players tring MO per day, but 99.9% dont stay.

Is that due to poor game design or people realizing that this level of hardcore isnt for them? as Seb had said.

I would argue its mostly what Seb had said, in addition to the new player experience being so un-fun that initial losses are so heavily felt and dont make for an enjoyable experience over all.

Tldr; its a mixed bag. Most people dont actually want a game this hardcore but the game being so tedious to start doesnt help any.

 

[Rhias]

I don't know all of these "hardcore" games listed above but quite a few of them have full loot, but they "restart" quite often.
Let's take Rust. Usually when you build something there it doesn't even last until the next night and it is gone. If you're lucky and it is not destroyed for a longer time it's gone at the next wipe, usually latest at the next bigger patch. Some servers even wipe weekly.

Or Fort Night... You die and start a new round. That's how the game works.

Everything is gone preatty fast and you start frequently with nothing again.

Or LiF. The goods are basically worthless there. The only thing that matters is assets (crafting benches with some quality) and your characters skills. With proper skills most products can be produced in high quanity and replaced easily.

 

[GrayFox Master Thief]

I think MO should lern from RUST, that game is more hard core then MO 100 times. U can be killd anywhere anytime people can kill u while u sleep, people can easily siege ur house and take ur loot from ur chests. People get raided like 2 times a day sometimes, locks can be pickt and still there is over 50k people online. The problem is not in full loot, what can u lose, the real issue is the game needs to have more action and things need to happen more offten. When i leave Tindrem or whatever town i want to kno that i will have garanteed funn by looting someones house or getting in someones town at least, finding someone to kill etc.
Now days MO is foccust more on stuff that take ages to do, like if someone wants to take revange on enemy guild they have to log in wood choppers then chop wood then find metals amd materials then find siege weapon and buy it, then transport all that to the place u wana siege and when u do all that u migth just get killd by some group of reds u run into or most of the time u will just attack an emty pallisade.

I dont find that funn at all, if the goal of that is the game to be realistic the game wont succseed beccouse lets be real game is a game and people r here to have funn not live a seccond life. And the game will stay at 100 pop for ever until that issue is ressolved.

 

[Speznat]

I think MO should lern from RUST, that game is more hard core then MO 100 times. U can be killd anywhere anytime people can kill u while u sleep, people can easily siege ur house and take ur loot from ur chests. People get raided like 2 times a day sometimes, locks can be pickt and still there is over 50k people online. The problem is not in full loot, what can u lose, the real issue is the game needs to have more action and things need to happen more offten. When i leave Tindrem or whatever town i want to kno that i will have garanteed funn by looting someones house or getting in someones town at least, finding someone to kill etc.
Now days MO is foccust more on stuff that take ages to do, like if someone wants to take revange on enemy guild they have to log in wood choppers then chop wood then find metals amd materials then find siege weapon and buy it, then transport all that to the place u wana siege and when u do all that u migth just get killd by some group of reds u run into or most of the time u will just attack an emty pallisade.

I dont find that funn at all, if the goal of that is the game to be realistic the game wont succseed beccouse lets be real game is a game and people r here to have funn not live a seccond life. And the game will stay at 100 pop for ever until that issue is ressolved.

I guess what MO can learn from rust is the Time INvest to Fun Time.

Mortal: Grinding 10Hours, 5 feel okay, and 5 totally pain in the ass for nonsense timers/ unfair balance of time vs stuff for fun.
Rust: grinding 10hours feeling 8-9hours fun, because you achive very much in that short time.

Mortal needs Polish in things like Time Investment. its always feels unfair if some guy farm 10 min for a 1g weapon and fuck your time for example 100g with it, that feels unfair someone can fuck your 10hours and he only needs to invest 10mins.
Sure much people hate this kind of gameplay because its not gameplay its like we are all masochists and want to torment ourselfs

 

[Rhias]

I guess what MO can learn from rust is the Time INvest to Fun Time.

Mortal: Grinding 10Hours, 5 feel okay, and 5 totally pain in the ass for nonsense timers/ unfair balance of time vs stuff for fun.
Rust: grinding 10hours feeling 8-9hours fun, because you achive very much in that short time.

I agree.

Mortal needs Polish in things like Time Investment. its always feels unfair if some guy farm 10 min for a 1g weapon and fuck your time for example 100g with it, that feels unfair someone can fuck your 10hours and he only needs to invest 10mins.

Strongly disagree. Why shouldn't I be able to defeat somewhone who does not know how to properly use his resources, only because he spend more time grinding?

 

[NewMudjin]

Main reason to Mortal not being a huge success is the "This fucking game" moments. You know what Im talking about.
You transport items and dismount to run up a hill, your mount disappears into the mountain and becomes out of range to command.
You get stuck on a flat rock and just bounce in the air unable to even enter combat mode until a stray belbus eats you.
You fight an NPC in a cave and it vanishes into the wall but keeps attacking you.

There are also game mechanics that works as intended and still is very frustrating, like not being able to read the owners name from a house. I remember 5having to run every char on 3 accounts to attempt to transfer it.

Just a simple thing like transfering items between chars can be a complete pain in the ass.

The developers need to play the game activly to see these things.

 

[Aesorn]

The only problem with comparing MO to games like Rust as @Rhias pointed out is that the option to reset and frequent resets make it entirely different type of "full-loot" game. I myself literally don't play any of those survival games simply for this fact. Why do I want to reset my ENTIRE progression in a game every other week or month? This is what seperates a real mmo from just a survival game like Rust or ARK and I think to a lot of people this is a big part of what makes mmo's in general so appealing, having almost infinite progression and lifetime(ideally) at least for me is partly why I am here and not somewhere else.

Reading the steam reviews gives a good picture of the biggest problems from this game that makes new players not like MO and keeps them away, the word potential gets brought up a lot even by the negative reviews but the power gap between subbed and/or geared players is a huge complaint, the bugs and unpolish, and lastly SV's past mistakes and drama plus the "toxic" community all seem to be the biggest issues that new players have had. People love Ultima Online and its still very active to this day(at least the private servers are) and since MO is just 3D ultima, the games core concept and design is mostly fine, there's just other huge quite obvious problems overall that games like UO and EVE don't have.

The breach for sure makes it even harder for MO to try and push forward past the players it made leave and the more bad reviews it added to steam but there are many options SV has even if MO gets to the absolute brink of death. If it came down to a last resort, why not change the name and re-brand everything and release a "new MO" on steam after you and the community think the game is actually in a ok enough state for semi-decent reviews, or at the very least to try and get decent player numbers again that hopefully won't leave instantly this time around. Darkfall died but all it took was some people to semi re-brand and hype it up again to get a bunch of vets returning and new players trying it.

 

[Godkin Veratas]

I would look to other popular games as an indication of how popular full-loot pvp games are as well as where they fall on the spectrum of time investment vs potential loss.

The most popular games dont have any where near full-loot mechanics. Simply a small repair bill or some other triviality.

Even considering other full-loot games as others alluded to, the investment vs loss ratio doesnt approach that of MO.

Surely there are design flaws, as with any game, that contribute negatively to the retention rate. But i dont assume that is the primary reason.

If we look at recent financial reports of SV they mention a figure of 500,000 unique downloads.

Are we prepared to say that such a small portion stay simply because of bad design and not because of the harsh nature of the game?

I think seb is spot on when he says many people think they want ultra hardcore but when they experience it, often times they dont.

Whats more likely to make a new player quit today:

Losing their 10g set of gear that took them 2 hours to save up for because of senseless murder.

Or, losing a set of gear deep in the sator dungeon because a mage bugged in the walls and wiped the group?

The first example is that of a player who most likely has minimal investment in the game so instead of grinding for another couple hours they decide they'll go play something else which offers a fun experience for their precious time.

The second example is almost always going to be a person who has more time invested, along with the knowledge and resources built up to know that 20g suit they just lost is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Before the breach Henrik had mentioned in public discord that they had 80 new players tring MO per day, but 99.9% dont stay.

Is that due to poor game design or people realizing that this level of hardcore isnt for them? as Seb had said.

I would argue its mostly what Seb had said, in addition to the new player experience being so un-fun that initial losses are so heavily felt and dont make for an enjoyable experience over all.

Tldr; its a mixed bag. Most people dont actually want a game this hardcore but the game being so tedious to start doesnt help any.

How many people wrote, I thought I wanted full- loot, but I realized after losing my gear, I don't. Suggesting it's a lack of investment misses more basic observable reasons and replaces it with speculation. That speculation is informed with bad data imo. Perhaps I'll be shown wrong. Perhaps more investment in the game will make people stay. As a long time player, I can say I've seen many quit because of design, balance, and lack of polish and never once due to full loot. They don't go to kitten'd, or theme parks.If anything, the intensity of full loot brings them back despite the flaws.