I recall back in 2007 Vanguardsoh had a service where for something around $1.50 you were allowed to show your character's stats, items, and other cool info on a profile page within the main website.
Granted there are a lot of services out there that do this for free these days, but if it was officially done by Visionary Realms for Pantheon I have a feeling it would work out fine. It was a good idea in 2007 and I still think it is a good idea in 2020.
Do you know the best way to pull in lots of money past release? Ensuring that the game is actually good BEFORE release, through thorough and extensive testing and making every possible effort to make the game interesting and challenging. Do all that and VR will not be lacking in money.
Visionary Realms WILL be fine financially, the idea is meant to pull in more money at a faster rate so that they can expand the development team. Needless to say with the expanded development team they can create more content at a faster pace, resulting in a better & fuller game.
This thread was not meant to question their current financial situation. They have publicly said that they have enough money to last through launch, and I have zero reason to question it based on the gameplay we have seen from the Stream's and Newsletters. Not to mention how they are handling testing, we all learned from Vanguardsoh that having only one person in QA is suicide.
To stick to the actual topic at hand:
I have no problem with any cash generating ideas they want to use (outside of the game). I personally like the idea of being able to look at my character from a website while offline. I don't think I would like it enough to pay for it though. But I am pretty stingy when it comes to how I spend my entertainment money haha.
Maybe there are some other ideas out there that I would be willing to pay for though.
Wyatt said:I recall back in 2007 Vanguardsoh had a service where for something around $1.50 you were allowed to show your character's stats, items, and other cool info on a profile page within the main website.
Granted there are a lot of services out there that do this for free these days, but if it was officially done by Visionary Realms for Pantheon I have a feeling it would work out fine. It was a good idea in 2007 and I still think it is a good idea in 2020.
This idea was ahead of it's time technologically but fun. They were linking everything that happened in-game, items, discovery's, crafting, NPC, kills, etc. to player profiles.
It would have been great if they hadn't run out of money and had SoE/Smedley jump in and rush the game out the door.
The vision was ahead of the tech and the power of the DB's and storage systems at the time. Either that or the code just sucked. And they were also writing results to players systems as well that caused issues.
And I recall they had to reset that database at least once in the life of Vanguard due to problems with their DB design that needed periodic field fixes.
I still recall a raid in APW after one such reset. Our raid had just killed Zaygius (the giant eyeball dude before Kotasoth), and everyone in the raid, 23 other players all CTD'd exactly at the point Zaygius died. I determined it was due to the code documenting each players getting credit for the first kill of Zaygius.
You would typically see a message like this on your screen.
I was the only player out of 48 that did not CTD. And as people logged back in and upon questioning them, I ascertained it was due to me being the only one having a 1st generation SSD. SSD's were brand new and fairly expensive at the time, and it's performance allowed me to survive the CTD that those 5400rpm (some 7200) magnetic drives experienced.
zewtastic said:More Kool Aide for you Wyatt?
If they were fine financially the game would be live and they would be working on expansions and DLC.
I'm more of a Coke Zero guy. =)
They are fine financially with the pace they are going at, and team size they currently have. If either variable changes during this stage of development it could lead to rushed buggy content, or Visionary Realms burning through all of their* funding. We will just have to see how this play's out.
If there are creative ways for VR to bring in money, it doesn't bother me as long as untimately they serve to support the core game they have been presenting. I like Wyatt's idea though, like Ranarius, I probably wouldn't pay for it myself. If for some reason these things were to start altering the core game then I'd have a problem with them.
