While I cannot comment on everyone's personal feelings and opinions, strictly speaking from business perspective, OP is completely right.Originally Posted by Vakris_One Go to original post
1. Some huge games are coming out at similar time
2. Kids having free time during summer and I personally don't like it, but they are large population when it comes to video games and spending real money for pay to win upgrades.
3. They are giving game for free right now and without update they will get nothing in return. Players who get free game will most likely stop playing by the time update gets out.
I agree with everything Vakris_One said.
OP doesn't speak for the majorly of the community and I find it offensive when someone puts words in my mouth.
The content is not ready nor it will affect the new branch of players that just joined, the only players hyped and impatient for the new content are the old players (Why? Because everything is still new to the new players, and they have much to discover and try until the new content is out).
Releasing the content now would only affect the game negatively, as it would be buggy and unbalanced (exactly the same reason why the game had problems in day one), not to mention as already stated there's still systems in BETA that haven't been touched in months.
Developers better finish, balance and rework everything that is currently in-game before releasing new content.
So ignoring the kids comment because the rating of the game that shouldn't be a thing (likely more of a thing than some people would like though I agree) again, the same points I made to the OP. Given that the two characters that were ready to be shown were said to be in alpha state, how do you expect the devs to get around that? Put out the characters barely finished and have people complaining about balance issues for the next three months where they could have gotten it polished? Also, again, people have said that For Honor will suffer because big games are coming out or because the season is launching at the same time as another game, it is still here.Originally Posted by NHLGoldenKnight Go to original post
I don't claim to speak for everyone, obviously, and I do not use myself as a benchmark for every other person, but since I am stating facts that can be researched and the op is saying that he speaks for thousands of people, it is not me that the burden of proof, so to speak, is on.
Well, those are the issues that Ubisoft should have planned for. If they have worked harder, faster and smarter, they would be in a position to release the update earlier.Originally Posted by CandleInTheDark Go to original post
I can't comment on other people's opinion, but as I said earlier, from strictly business prospective, it doesn't make any sense at all.
Also, I can give you my personal situation. I stopped playing game recently and this updated would definitely bring back not just me, but my wife as well. Now, we have to wait for way too long.
So 4 months from now, issue will not be do I still want to play this game. Issue will be time I have, since most grown-ups and actually kids as well, have a limited time for entertainment. For me, that is about 2 hours per day. Right now, there is not really many games I play and I have some spare time. However 4 months from now, things are going to change. There are many interesting games coming out and my gaming time is limited. How much of my time should I allocate for playing half broken game ( that I still like) compared to new triple A games coming out?
I am going back to business again, but giving free game right now makes no sense at all. Update is too far away and I feel like new mode could really help this game. But if new players will get stucked playing ganking dominioin for 4 months, you really think majority of them will stay in the game after that experience? Giving game for free 1 week before update would be good PR move, this not so much.
Fair points except that from a business perspective surely it is better to release something that isn't in a buggy and unfinished beta state. If they rush it out the door prematurely they will lose a massive number of players who will not be coming back because of this game's bad history. Losing some players to boredom or to other games happens naturally anyway with any type of ongoing game, nobody can prevent that. All the devs can and should do is to focus on making sure that when they do release content it is of the highest quality possible.Originally Posted by NHLGoldenKnight Go to original post
Angering your playerbase with rushed and buggy content is one of the worst things any developer can do.
Well, I absolutely agree. But that is something Ubisoft should have taken into account and planned better. Maybe work faster, or smarter, whatever you want to call it. Also, let's be honest. Ubisoft regularly delivers broken updates and heroes when it comes to For Honor, it doesn't matter how much time they got. Call me pessimist, but new update will no be exception, 1 month or 4 months from now.Originally Posted by Vakris_One Go to original post
Alright, I’ve finally read through this thing and I’m ready to give my reply.
So basically, what you’re after here is that the dev team should move the release of the new heroes we saw on E3 closer because four months is too far away and we’ll lose hype. Your first argument:
It is very true that many games are released in that month. They are released in that month for a reason, because market analyses show that it is a good month for releasing games with some fairly big holidays right around the corner where the games can be given as gifts to people. Some of these games are pretty big, you mention both CoD and Battlefield and it is true that these games will draw quite a crowd. The one thing you forget, and that dismisses this as an argument is that not all players play all games. Some people don’t give a rat’s flying toenail about certain games or even entire genres. For some, CoD means nothing, just like FH means nothing to many gamers. What does matter is that FH stands out as a unique game that is definitely doing its own thing. It is also the only game of its kind that has some sort of thing in October. As such, people who like this type of game has nothing else to distract them at release.Originally Posted by Redditmember55 Go to original post
Hype is a strong force and you are correct that it tends to die out if you are a fleeting player. But do you really think that Ubisoft would go to E3 to reveal something of this magnitude and then do nothing more until it is released four months later? That would be the single worst marketing decision they could make.Originally Posted by Redditmember55 Go to original post
Again, they didn’t set the release date at random, it has some real thought put behind it. E3 was the start and I have no doubt in my mind that we’ll be seeing more of the Wu Lin faction with regular intervals until October. Hype is a strong thing, maintaining it is an art.
So this is related to my first point. Not many games are released during the summer, why? Games don’t sell well during summer. Releasing now (or in August) would be a very bad thing for a profit-driven company.Originally Posted by Redditmember55 Go to original post
Humans are not patient? Please provide a source for this. Humans, because of our higher intellect and thus ability to reason with ourselves internally are only beaten in patience by reptiles.Originally Posted by Redditmember55 Go to original post
“We want to play them now” – Yes, that is exactly the reaction the devs wanted when they decided to unveil this at E3. It is all going according to the plan set up by Ubisoft’s marketing department. Again, this is not random.
Four heroes are too much because people won’t be able to decide? That is a very moot point. I assume that many players, like me and those I regularly talk about about the game, have one or a few favourites. A main and a few subs as it is called. Some even like a particular kind of hero, the fast and agile assassins, the never-wrong vanguards, stout heavies or the much more loosely defined hybrids. I will dare to venture out on a limb here and claim that most people does not find all four Wu Lin heroes equally attractive (If you do, good for you). I for one know exactly who I will play first, and second, I also know full well which one I probably won’t play at all.Originally Posted by Redditmember55 Go to original post
In the end, I believe you’re making a mountain out of a molehill here. If you want to try them all, do so. It’ll take you exactly four matches to go through them all. You can do that in an hour and move on with the ones you found interesting.
Heck, when you buy the base game you have an even bigger problem as three factions á four heroes = twelve heroes are right there, staring you in the face. Who will you pick first?!
I think we can handle four.
Yeah, none of these are problems, you just can’t see the plan in motion behind the curtains (Lacy, gently wafting curtains). You claim that the newcomers won’t stay because what they really want is to play the new heroes. I don’t think this makes much sense. Either these new people saw E3 and thought this would be a good time to get into the game, in which case they know that the Wu Lin will not be available until October. The other group of newcomers will have heard that the game was free and jumped in for whatever reason, there is no reason to expect that these people even know about the Wu Lin faction, and if they do they’ll also know that they won’t be available for a while.Originally Posted by Redditmember55 Go to original post
Not a solution, only more problems. Last I heard both Tiandi and Shaolin were in their alpha state (or even pre-alpha) of development. This means that they’re sorely lacking, this might be balance issues, graphical or mechanical bugs, issues with input and execution, playing them and performing certain moves might even break the game. Remember what I told you earlier about there being a plan behind releasing in four months? This is part of it, making the new characters playable and at least sort of balanced against the rest of roster. This solution may eliminate your proposed “problems”, but would introduce some pretty big ones as well. One month isn’t enough time to get everything ready, remember, we don’t even have a release date for the next season pass yet.Originally Posted by Redditmember55 Go to original post
Tough ****. It’s not done.Originally Posted by Redditmember55 Go to original post
Just because you’re hungry now doesn’t make the food ready, and you better wait if you don’t want salmonella.
This really is your only point with the whole thread, thinly veiled behind a long opening post – you’re impatient and you want the thing now. The way you’ve worded the whole thing shows that you either don’t realise or appreciate the amount of time and work that a release of this size requires. The devs have set a date in October, and this because it works with the market and with their schedule they should be done unless something goes catastrophically wrong. They will be done before release day, that is what they’ve planned, because that means that they won’t have to cram (if you do know game development you’ll know why this is to be avoided at all cost). The long and the short of it is that game development takes time, and the more you want to do the longer it takes, this is a substantial update and they’re releasing it all at once because that is what the developers want to do, that is their vision for this next step in For Honor’s life.
To be honest, demanding that this request is sent to the high levels of game development is literally telling the devs that their work, their plans, their schedule (and with that their lives) aren’t as important as you getting what you want. I can’t see it as anything else than an insult that you want to have hurled right at the top of the dev team.
Yer darn tootin’ right about that, my boy.Originally Posted by Baggin_ Go to original post
Save the game from what exactly? We haven’t had a good “this game is dead”-thread sourcing stats from steam in here for a while now. Yes, they have the characters movements (and by which I take it you mean move sets) but they are still in the alpha stage, they are not ready to be released. This should really mean something seeing how people proclaimed this game to still be in beta for several months after release.Originally Posted by HNU_vidiviktor Go to original post
Argumentum ad populum or the majority fallacy states that a proposition is claimed to be true or good solely because a majority or many people believe it to be so. This is of course false because there is no correlation between somethings truthfulness and the number of people who agree to it. In short – many people can be wrong. Your argument should be able to stand on its own if it is a good one.Originally Posted by Redditmember55 Go to original post
Also, the hype is not over as I’ve written earlier. Successful hype is not generated all at once and then not maintained.
Exactly my point from earlier. Good to hear that you enjoy this game so much. For me, Good old Mount&Blade will always be the first one I install after getting a new computer.Originally Posted by DrinkinMehStella Go to original post
Of course it is not possible to ask every player of a game with this many players. Keep in mind that only a fraction of players frequent this forum, the crowd on reddit is even larger and even then I can’t say that it is likely that everyone who plays the game is a member there. However, if you do want to claim to speak for the community at large you must first make sure that your views are actually shared by at least a sizeable chunk of said community. The least you could do would be to start a thread with a poll saying “I want this game released earlier, who’s with me?” and see if you get more people with you than against you.Originally Posted by Redditmember55 Go to original post
I agree fully. Newcomers hype will be long dead by the time this release hits. However, there is no way we can state that all of the newcomers would stay if the release came earlier either. I imagine that many people see this as an opportunity to really test the game. Free weekends are great and all, but if you aren’t free (much) that particular weekend it doesn’t mean much. With this you can grab the starter set, then play when you want. You can sample some of it now, some next month, some next year if you want.Originally Posted by kristopee Go to original post
Broken updates are always bad, but I don’t think we’re quite in “sealing the deal”-space just yet. The same kind of rhetoric has circulated before. When new heroes were released, when we made the switch to servers, when ranked mode came… This game is actually doing quite well and I think that the dedicated players that are still sticking around (such as yourself, waiting for siege mode all this time) will still find the game fun even if the release of all this new stuff doesn’t go perfectly.
You’ll have to take that up with Piaget, the 18+ playerbase that this game it marketed toward should’ve outgrown that way of thinking in favour of longer wait – bigger payoff.Originally Posted by Mia.Nora Go to original post
While I do agree that one cannot use a veteran’s commitment as a baseline for the whole community, I cannot see that either of them has done so. They have pointed out that their own patience is stronger than what the OP suggests is true for the whole community. In fact, Vakris is arguing your very point quite adamantly. Also, the way this is written makes it read as if you’re trying to dismiss Candle’s and Vakris’s arguments because they are themselves extreme cases. I don’t know if this was intended or not, but I cannot see their stance of “Not everyone is that impatient” as unreasonably extreme.Originally Posted by Mia.Nora Go to original post
I touched upon this point earlier, but I agree with much of this. This update cannot be released earlier than expected because of the amount of work that needs to be done. I do, however, believe that this update should come out on time as both Roman and Eric have talked about how long they’ve planned the Wu Lin faction. Perhaps there have been someone working on this ever since release and now they only need to finalise it?Originally Posted by Mia.Nora Go to original post
Great starting point. However, from a business perspective Ubisoft is doing everything right. I’ve already talked about the first two of your points, but the TL;DR is that games sell very badly in summer, which is why we get so many releases during autumn.Originally Posted by NHLGoldenKnight Go to original post
Giving the game away for free now is a good step to get new players into the actual game while they wait for all the shiny things they saw at E3. Someone who gets into it now will be at a good level of skill and understanding of game mechanics in four months when the new guys comes. Continual upkeep of the hype started at E3 (and actually having a pretty good game to begin with) is of course essential to keeping these new players interested.
Yes, and had they worked even harder they could’ve released even sooner, and had they then worked harder still, the release would be even earlier. It doesn’t work like that. These people have a schedule, things to work on besides this and so on and so forth…Originally Posted by NHLGoldenKnight Go to original post
This has been a fact since video games first saw the light of day. Since then an industry as profit-driven as the gaming industry have put a lot of money into figuring out when to release games for maximum payback. I’ve already said this, but we see so many releases at specific times for a reason. These people have done their homework, this is what years of experience and research shows works. Even though people had less spare time when the games release they sell better if released at those times. When you play games doesn’t matter that much for the developers, when you buy them does.Originally Posted by NHLGoldenKnight Go to original post
Halvtand,
I couldn't not to notice how you are referring to new games and market for new games throughout your post. However, For Honor is not a new game. We are not getting For Honor 2 but just a larger update for which many players will not have to spend any money at all to enjoy it. So it is really hard to compare just a update with completely new games coming out from triple A studios. Sometimes opportunity lies when market is down. Ubisoft doesn't offer new For Honor game, it is hard to compete against completely new games which will actually generate real revenue, since you have to pay for them. So what is best time to capture market and increase customer base? Now, when competition is weak and you can "hook" someone into playing this game or at the end of year when dozens of new games are waiting for us?
The other point is time we have to wait for it. I understand that Ubi has professionals who work in finance and marketing but that doesn't mean everything they do makes sense. I work as marketing analyst for large hospitality company in Vegas and we deal with huge revenues and huge marketing budgets, on much higher level than Ubisoft as a whole company. So I have pretty good team of people and guess what? Mistakes happen. So from my business experience, their approach when it comes to new update is wrong. IMO, 4 months is too long to keep interest of new players when game has limited experience to offer. Dominion is cancerous and most new players will give up much quicker than 4 months.
Distributing free game right now ( without an update) achieves very little on a long term basic. If we were talking about 1 or maybe 2 weeks before update, it would be a huge PR move. But 4 months before the update? Not so much, most likely not many players will even get free game at this time. A lot of them could be returning players who also have nothing worth returning to, unless eager to try tribute mode.
I'll happily wait 4 months for this content if, in the meantime, we get proper reworks for older characters (I'm looking at you Nobushi and you Peacekeeper) and a few new maps for Dominion and Tribute.
Edit: Oh and feat balancing/reworks. That's also another thing that will need doing before the new characters are released.