Part le deuxieme

14:56 - [O7]Garth: I was typing, about that Thorim 2.0 fight
14:56 - [O7]Garth: It's like Twin Valkyrs meets 4 horseman in 1 boss
14:56 - Alexis: Hmm, yeah
14:57 - Alexis: I loved tanking 4H as a tree and I loved mage tanking in the HKMaulgar fight
14:58 - [O7]Garth: You could make it with a teleport to start of gauntlet kind of thing
14:58 - Alexis: I liked the Solarian fight where any DPS can kill you
14:58 - Alexis: It seems a good thing for raid flavour when the DPS have real responsibility, besides their rotation
14:58 - [O7]Garth: Group 1 fighting boss G2 fighting the adds. When you start fighting Thorim 2.0 You have a +150% damage buff. And it slowly diminishes
14:59 - Alexis: Yup that also occurred to me
14:59 - Alexis: I was thinking of ways you could make people want to do 4/6 or 3/7 setups as they got good
14:59 - [O7]Garth: G2 has to battle through the arena to Take over and start with 150% buff again. Once they enter G1 gets teleported out to the start of a gauntlet and it starts over
14:59 - [O7]Garth: So if the gauntlet is slacking, damage will be low (too low/enrage)
14:59 - Alexis: Ahh I see, not what I was thinking at all
15:00 - Alexis: I like it though
15:00 - [O7]Garth: Yeah, the latter just popped in :) didn't read your part yet :D
15:00 - Alexis: I loved the Thorim 1.0 beginning part too, where the arena team are embattled and slowly getting more desperate for their friends to charge to the rescue
15:00 - Alexis: really cool social engineering
15:00 - [O7]Garth: Yeah
15:01 - Alexis: Hmm - an extension to the raid-only idea. You could charge per boss. So at any time you can go "F2P" by no longer buying bosses. Package old "tiers" into cheap bundles and eventually just give them away basic
15:01 - [O7]Garth: The arena/gauntlet part was the "epic" part though, Thorim was cake, unfortunatly
15:01 - Alexis: It sounds expensive but if you made each boss say £3-4, it'd be hard to resist
15:01 - [O7]Garth: F2P?
15:01 - Alexis: and, it'd cost less than a wow sub!
15:02 - Alexis: Yeah. F2P is good because lots of gamers are poor
15:02 - [O7]Garth: what is it?
15:02 - Alexis: Oh, free to play
15:03 - Alexis: The game company wins because on average people spend more than they would on a sub
15:03 - Alexis: The people win because they get the flexibility to keep playing at no cost if they're broke one month
15:03 - [O7]Garth: Ah, I like F2P:D
15:04 - Alexis: A wow sub is £9/month btw. You could probably charge £5 / boss, with a base rate of 2 / month + bonuses now and then
15:04 - Alexis: That model would really inspire you to create bosses people want to buy as well :)
15:04 - [O7]Garth: only "problem" I see, is if it's with guilds, you need to buy it, you can't do boss X when 9 out of 10 people have it. Peer pressure?
15:05 - Alexis: Peer pressure? Did I build peer pressure into my pricing model? Oh dear. That was naughty.
15:05 - Alexis: *snicker*
15:05 - [O7]Garth: O_o
15:06 - Alexis: No guild runs 10mans with only 10 people. Holidays happen, poor periods happen
15:06 - [O7]Garth: the F2P also lets players make their own bosses
15:06 - Alexis: Huh?
15:06 - [O7]Garth: I mean
15:06 - [O7]Garth: They'll suggest bosses you can use, so the development team can be small
15:07 - [O7]Garth: I'm drifting off now :)
15:07 - [O7]Garth: Back on topic!
15:07 - [O7]Garth: Would the fee be needed in the first place?
15:07 - Alexis: Yeah encouraging suggestions would be a good idea... providing you don't make foolish promises ofc
15:08 - [O7]Garth: I know nothing about gaming and development, and games need people to keep it updated etc. But The less people have to pay the more will play. Alien swarm is a games almost everybody in my steamlist has downloaded and played
15:08 - [O7]Garth: And still do
15:08 - [O7]Garth: well not daily, but sometimes :d
15:09 - Alexis: You could give away 10 bosses free, probably. Kind of an "infinite trial"
15:09 - Alexis: I don't like the box cost of wow at all
15:10 - Alexis: As I see it, getting people to install your game is the hard part because you have very little influence over their behaviour at that point - just marketing
15:10 - Alexis: Once you're in, it becomes about the quality of your product + your ongoing pricing strategy
15:12 - Alexis: So yeah free trial because everyone likes something for nothing. Once they've sampled the candy and got over the initial learning curve, buying the latest boss for £4-5 so you can play with non-noobs is a natural
15:12 - Alexis: By that point they know how to play, have hopefully had a great time they want more of and have already spent money
15:13 - [O7]Garth: True
15:13 - Alexis: Spending the next amount of money is easier, because they have already decided your product is worthwhile and they want to validate that decision
15:13 - Alexis: Plus hopefully they have started to make social connections
15:13 - [O7]Garth: They'll be hooked, hopefully
15:13 - Alexis: That is more or less what I am saying, yes :D
15:14 - [O7]Garth: And then the moneymaking can commence *evil laughter*
15:14 - Alexis: I'm no sales guru but I know putting big barriers to entry is poison
15:14 - [O7]Garth: One of the reasons I'm not buying SC2
15:15 - Alexis: Hmm... SC2 for me is a terrible business. Then, they didn't make it for me
15:15 - Alexis: It has a massive sticker cost and immense learning curve... you have to REALLY want to play it
15:16 - [O7]Garth: Yeah
15:16 - [O7]Garth: And once you bought it, you kinda want the Zerg and Protoss part as well
15:16 - Alexis: Hmm - that didn't really work on me
15:16 - Alexis: You can play all 3 races in MP with the first box
15:17 - Alexis: I assume they'll be introducing new MP units for all races in each expansion; the SP terran is much richer than the MP
15:18 - [O7]Garth: Oh, only played a couple of Terran SP levels
15:18 - [O7]Garth: New units.... perhaps
15:18 - [O7]Garth: I think just story mode's
15:18 - Alexis: My impression is that most of the playerbase want to play MP
15:19 - [O7]Garth: Yeah, probably
15:19 - Alexis: The SP is to hook in people who don't realise they want to play MP yet
15:19 - Alexis: On that basis, they have to enrich the MP every time or MP-ers just won't buy the expansion - while consuming infrastructure
15:20 - [O7]Garth: But Story is important as well for (blizzards player base, I think) So having done the SP will be fun/interesting/ good to learn it (new things?)
15:20 - [O7]Garth: Well, SC1 is still being played (prior to SC2 release that is)
15:20 - Alexis: Oh sure story is important, everyone will play the SP
15:21 - Alexis: but MP is the lasting appeal and if people are making a buy/nobuy decision, zero MP extension is going to weight that decision heavily
15:22 - [O7]Garth: For a MP?
15:22 - Alexis: huh?
15:23 - [O7]Garth: WEll
15:23 - [O7]Garth: I mean, single players need to be extended to keep players interested
15:23 - [O7]Garth: But afaik, MP's have that problem far less
15:23 - [O7]Garth: Everytime you play it's different
15:24 - Alexis: MPers will keep playing no matter what
15:24 - [O7]Garth: Making the need for new content less
15:24 - [O7]Garth: Yeah
15:24 - Alexis: but the question here is, how do you make them buy the next box?
15:24 - Alexis: it has to have SP in it, but if that's all there is, I think a lot of MPers will keep playing but not buy the box
15:24 - [O7]Garth: Ah
15:24 - [O7]Garth: Right
15:25 - [O7]Garth: But if you have 1-2 extra units in the box
15:26 - Alexis: then anyone who doesn't buy it is at a handicap
15:26 - [O7]Garth: There will be a problem when people play with or without box. It'll be unfair/
15:26 - [O7]Garth: Yeah
15:26 - Alexis: which is UNTHINKABLE to any pro gamer
15:26 - [O7]Garth: Or make different "ladders" worlds" for them?
15:26 - Alexis: Why would Blizz do that?
15:27 - Alexis: I mean unless they don't like making ridiculous mountains of money
15:27 - Alexis: History appears to show to the contrary...
15:27 - Alexis: Some players might complain, but - screw them, cheapass gits
15:27 - Alexis: I think it's pretty well understood that if you don't buy the product you get an inferior service
15:28 - [O7]Garth: Heh
15:28 - Alexis: You can choose not to buy TBC/LK, but Blizz don't go out of their way to help make that a sensible option
15:28 - [O7]Garth: If you do buy it: more monies, if you don't buy it, stop playing and still have money from that first box you mean?
15:29 - [O7]Garth: Yeah true
15:29 - Alexis: Well - you buy the first box, get a certain amount, are happy. Yay
15:29 - Alexis: You either buy the 2nd box and get more content, simple.
15:30 - Alexis: Or you don't buy the 2nd box and keep the same amount of content. You're probably less happy than before because now relatively, you have less to everyone else; and most people have moved on
15:30 - Alexis: That's really not Blizz' fault though, keeping up with the crowd always entails a cost
15:31 - Alexis: If you have some very good friends they might agree not to buy the box either and that's your decision
15:32 - [O7]Garth: Hmm, I guess :/
15:32 - [O7]Garth: Hard to argue against that
15:32 - Alexis: I have to post something - see you soon