Funcom Blames MetaCritic For Share Price Drop
- Thread starter The Wooster
- Start date
They barely marketed the game. Most of their target audience didn't realize it had actually released. They still don't. So many of the peole I know and play with still don't realize that its out of beta and is on store shelves. All they know about it were one or two interesting sounding articles from ages ago.malestrithe said:
First rule of video games. If you want to make money and have your stock go up, you need to let people know it is actually available to play.
My main problem is that they want me to buy their game and then expect me to pay monthly to keep playing it. I'll be playing guildwars 2 because they sell the game and then let me play it for free. either sell me my game and let me play it or make the game free and make me pay a subscription to play.Gennadios said:
im not demanding free to play since paying something gives you some reason to play it other than a idle diversion, but kicking me coming and going is a practice that is killing the MMO market and if they continue with it i'll be glad to see it crash.
A new MMO launches just before Guild Wars 2.
People rate it highly on metacritic (84)
"Professionals" rate it comparatively lower (72)
Company share price bombs.
The problem here is that people are using "reviewer" metacritic data as a reliable source. It's ALWAYS THE USER SCORE THAT COUNTS.
Look at the difference between Diablo 3's Rscore and it's Uscore
Now look at Dragon Age 2.
See the problem here?
People rate it highly on metacritic (84)
"Professionals" rate it comparatively lower (72)
Company share price bombs.
The problem here is that people are using "reviewer" metacritic data as a reliable source. It's ALWAYS THE USER SCORE THAT COUNTS.
Look at the difference between Diablo 3's Rscore and it's Uscore
Now look at Dragon Age 2.
See the problem here?
What?Grey Carter said:
How is it considered bad when other gamers are rating it higher than what professional critics are giving it?
I'm not sure why Funcom would have a point there.
Why is this a problem with Metacritic and not the actual critics or have I missed something here?
I don't use Metacritic at all.
Educate me.
With respect, "exciting" is highly subjective. I thought that the intro video to TSW was intriguing and different, and it reminded me a little of one of my favourite games of all time (Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines). On the other hand, that GW2 intro looked like Yet Another Generic Fantasy RPG; it could have been Dragon Age 2 or Kingdoms of Amalur or Neverwinter Nights 2. That's not exciting at all to me.CriticKitten said:Notice a difference? I sure do. The second one was actually exciting.
I like how TSW manages to incorporate adventure and puzzle game concepts and puts them into an MMO. Quite nice to have to use my brain for a change.
That said, I think the real problem is just how much power Metacritic has gotten. We've got publishers dropping developers, or withholding bonuses depending on how it does on Metacritic, which isn't always fair in how it calculates its average scores (various examples of this are listed on the first page of this topic).
And now there's even developers who only want to hire people if they've worked on a game that got 85 on Metacritic or higher. How stupidly broken is this? I'd say it's high time we as gamers simply stopped using Metacritic before this damn site becomes the alpha and the omega of the industry, and that would be a bad thing for us all.
That said, I think the real problem is just how much power Metacritic has gotten. We've got publishers dropping developers, or withholding bonuses depending on how it does on Metacritic, which isn't always fair in how it calculates its average scores (various examples of this are listed on the first page of this topic).
And now there's even developers who only want to hire people if they've worked on a game that got 85 on Metacritic or higher. How stupidly broken is this? I'd say it's high time we as gamers simply stopped using Metacritic before this damn site becomes the alpha and the omega of the industry, and that would be a bad thing for us all.
Yeah, they're pretty much right. Guild Wars 2 is going to take up a lot of room in the specialty game area, and it's not subscription based. Plus, it looks pretty cool. Gonna be tough going up against that.
Free to play isn't death, and if they're right about both the ingame store getting them good money, and the lower than normal costs to run it, I think people would love to check it out if it wasn't trying to fight for subscriptions. Hell, I'd take a ten dollar sub fee. It looks interesting...
Since the game is largely based on factions, it also hurts if you're not piling in as many people as you can to begin with.
Free to play isn't death, and if they're right about both the ingame store getting them good money, and the lower than normal costs to run it, I think people would love to check it out if it wasn't trying to fight for subscriptions. Hell, I'd take a ten dollar sub fee. It looks interesting...
Since the game is largely based on factions, it also hurts if you're not piling in as many people as you can to begin with.
God I am sick of how so many companies seem to base their ideas of "success" off complete and utter near perfection or nothing. What our game only got an 8 out of 10 and not a 10 out of 10? well shit better fire everyone and disolve the company cause clearly its all been a failure.
If I was running a company I wouldn't care if my products were considered the best on the market so long as my company was successful enough to continue existing and growing and my employees happy and our work continuly comprising things we can be proud of. But I guess most people in charge of things in the business world just refuse to ever accept that kind of reality.
If I was running a company I wouldn't care if my products were considered the best on the market so long as my company was successful enough to continue existing and growing and my employees happy and our work continuly comprising things we can be proud of. But I guess most people in charge of things in the business world just refuse to ever accept that kind of reality.
At first, I didn't want to try this game because it was a mmorpg and that turns me off. But the Chtulhu/Conspiracy-modern world theme just kept calling to me and at last I opened the wallet anyway.
First couple of hours I felt cheated. The combat felt clunky and I was quite "meh". I mean, the story and atmosphere was awesome and I -really- love actually having a modern world setting. But I felt a bit meh. But the character levling system kept me hoping that it was just a threshold and that I should just stick with it for a little longer.
So I did. And I am happy I did.
TSW is not as different from WoW as people keep shouting about, but I like it. The leveling/build system is deep and interesting. The setting/story/atmosphere is just what I've been looking for. I'm so damn tired of fantasy settings...GW2 might seem like a good game, but it's still a fantasy setting and I just don't want that now - maybe later, but for now I just can't cope with anymore elves and dwarves and bigass armored stuff. I want my modern world setting goddamnit!
TSW has a lot of problems still, so a 7.2 metascore...it's not that horrible. I would probably rate it a little higher, something like a solid 7.5-8.0 at least. But I think it has potential to grow. And I'm having a lot of fun with it. Will it last me a year? Maybe, I'm not sure. I'm the kind of gamer who likes to switch games often. But as long as it can last me a couple of months I'm happy.
Every game (even MMO's) doesn't have to be a "I will play this for as long as I live"-affair. I don't see myself quitting this game anytime soon though, there's still plenty of things for me to explore in this game - and I really enjoy attempting to piece together interesting character builds and actually having to think while playing the game now and again (even though I wouldn't mind if they'd added a few more of the investigation quests to the game, those quests are really really cool - especially when played with an RP party where people are not just googling the solutions )
Also, IMHO the review system where everything that is less than 80 is automatically "bad" is stupid. Everything less than 50 should be bad. This inflated scoring hurts everyone.
First couple of hours I felt cheated. The combat felt clunky and I was quite "meh". I mean, the story and atmosphere was awesome and I -really- love actually having a modern world setting. But I felt a bit meh. But the character levling system kept me hoping that it was just a threshold and that I should just stick with it for a little longer.
So I did. And I am happy I did.
TSW is not as different from WoW as people keep shouting about, but I like it. The leveling/build system is deep and interesting. The setting/story/atmosphere is just what I've been looking for. I'm so damn tired of fantasy settings...GW2 might seem like a good game, but it's still a fantasy setting and I just don't want that now - maybe later, but for now I just can't cope with anymore elves and dwarves and bigass armored stuff. I want my modern world setting goddamnit!
TSW has a lot of problems still, so a 7.2 metascore...it's not that horrible. I would probably rate it a little higher, something like a solid 7.5-8.0 at least. But I think it has potential to grow. And I'm having a lot of fun with it. Will it last me a year? Maybe, I'm not sure. I'm the kind of gamer who likes to switch games often. But as long as it can last me a couple of months I'm happy.
Every game (even MMO's) doesn't have to be a "I will play this for as long as I live"-affair. I don't see myself quitting this game anytime soon though, there's still plenty of things for me to explore in this game - and I really enjoy attempting to piece together interesting character builds and actually having to think while playing the game now and again (even though I wouldn't mind if they'd added a few more of the investigation quests to the game, those quests are really really cool - especially when played with an RP party where people are not just googling the solutions
)Also, IMHO the review system where everything that is less than 80 is automatically "bad" is stupid. Everything less than 50 should be bad. This inflated scoring hurts everyone.
Innovative... innovative.. I'm reading it over and over, I can't seem to see it anywhere in what I said. Might want to get your eyes checked out. I said pushing the bar, adding new shit, not innovating, I doubt any MMO could ever be innovating. Maybe Planetside 1 for its time. Pretty sure having a big 2 after your game also doesn't paint it as brand new, kinda suggests it's a sequel, which sort of implies it shares similarities with the previous title.. Kind of the opposite of brand new really isn't it.Saviordd1 said:
Shit son? You played it? GUESS WHAT?! ME TOO! Now we can both talk about how awesome it was!Remerik said:And WTH Elate, how are the mechanics Wow'ish? have you even seen the game in action. You should know what you are talking about before saying such things, your making yourself look stupid. Guess you cant help it though since you are obviously a victim of the GW2 hype and i bet you dont know that game is shit
CriticKitten said:
Every new MMO Needs some form of general accessible Free trial. I don't care how it's done but it needs SOME form of free trial to hook people on the fence. I'de bet just giving one would bring in plenty of new blood into the game who are wavering (like myself) to deal with the 50 dollar plus entry fee just to find the game isn't your taste and put it down before the first month is up. (plus it lets you make sure your comps up to snuff to run it properly. Hate getting a game I think and research says I should run on some workable level and end up smelling smoke as my poor processors chug and cook under the strain of trying to slightly delag the game to a workable form or some such weirdness.)