Weekly Update #80

Battlescape
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The hook is rooted in massive space battles. Look at Flavien’s own reaction to it. He experienced something that got him excited, and that’s a hook. I don’t know what he saw beyond 400 random ships, but communicating that to players is INS’s marketing challenge.

This is how it’s done.

This is how it’s not done

The first is a demonstration of the game experience in EVE Online. The second is some fantasy cooked up by Sony marketing which outrageously misrepresents the game experience in Planetside 2. INS tried the story-telling thing in their Kickstarter and I consider it to have been a serious mistake.

The CCP video is phenomenal. They use player voices. Those voices are talking about strategy and tactics that a newcomer won’t understand at all, but will be tremendously impressed by. Those newcomers can see that there will be a learning curve to figure out the game. The player voices are calm, clear and focused. They communicate anticipation and tension. These players are getting into something epic, and we see a bit of it in the rest of the video. CCP shows the user interface, the action of mining, of just transporting goods. They communicate the risks of playing the game. It’s about the game itself, not a story that marketing decided to make up from nothing.

So EVE Online has massive space battles. Those battles are predicated on lots of up-front preparation, coordination, focus and so forth. Risking accumulated assets is a really big part of it.

Battlescape’s space battles will be different. So their promotional materials will be different. It falls to INS to figure out how to make massive space battles into something worth spending money to experience. Will players buy the product so they can lead a wing of 20 fighters - because wings of 20 fighters actually exist in the game and need to be lead? Will they buy the product so that they can be one of the guys providing logistical support to the capital siege ships - because that is an experience that the game actually makes available?

Ultimately, those experiences are their hook. The massive fleet battles are the foundation that makes it work.

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62

I have to wonder about that Eve 2014 video: is that real gameplay ? It looks like a mix of real-gameplay audio and cinematic cameras ( SpaceJay style ) to me, but I never played more than a few hours of Eve and never participated in big battles myself so I could be wrong… but from what I’ve seen online and in videos, it doesn’t look like real gameplay you would actually experience. Big battles I’m seeing online are all point & click, zoomed out and tactical views; this video kind of mis-represents the gameplay as an action / twitch-based game IMO. But it does the job at being impressive and attractive, for sure.

Edit: like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO49yeIDDes

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63

This this this this! This is what sets Infinity apart for me.

Plus this[quote=“JB47394, post:61, topic:5914”]
Those voices are talking about strategy and tactics that a newcomer won’t understand at all, but will be tremendously impressed by. Those newcomers can see that there will be a learning curve to figure out the game. The player voices are calm, clear and focused.
[/quote]

Queue an op to defend an orbital whatever because you know one corp is gearing up an offensive op. When the attack comes you see a detachment force break off because the main attack was a ruse/cover for this smaller force to sneak attack a ground factory. Follow the defensive squad that breaks off in pursuit through reentry and engaging the offensive squad above the factory. Emphasize that it’s not a trailer but ingame footage. That’s the video that dreams are made of. That’s what gives me chills and why I want this game to succeed.

@InovaeFlavien

I played eve for about 5 years pretty consistently when I was into it…what’s not shown is the 2 hours of prep to get to those points but that’s absolutely real gameplay just with the UI off and graphics set to ultra. Nobody normally pays attention to the scenery in the background that makes the video look nice, but that’s how it’s played. Those cinematic cameras are cinematic cameras are still cinematic shots of ingame stuff. That’s what needs to happen for whatever you make of your own trailer. As a former eve player that is still by far my favorite trailer and still gives me chills because it’s represents the exact feelings you get when playing the game. It really is a fantastic trailer for emphasizing the incredible moments. There’s a bombing run near the end that is absolutely incredible and pulled off flawlessly. Executing fleet tactics is an awesome part of eve and should also be an awesome part of infinity.

Not shown is the soul crushing feeling of losing billions but hey that’s the game.

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64

Thank you. That was the point of posting it; it excites the sort people who would enjoy the game. That’s what a marketing video is properly for.

That would require some hardcore fleet management systems that the players would be using all the time. It would have to be second nature for players to get into the game, look for a fleet and fill an open spot. It would almost be like joining the crew of the USS Enterprise; find a billet on a ship and join that ship. You just go and do whatever the ship is doing. If you tire of that ship, go find a different one that appeals more.

So most players would just ride on the coattails of the organizers, and it would be the organizers who decide how battles proceed. Fleets would crystallize and shatter frequently, I would think.

I’m not sure that the INS guys have time to build that level of fleet management into the game. Without it, I figure it’ll mostly be a constant, formless push of attacks. Like any other arena game.

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65

Agreed. What’s more the EVE universe is on a single shard universe, so gameplay on Battlescape probably will require less commitment or at least different strategies. As for promotional videos the EVE one is immensely better than Planetside2 - having played both extensively, I prefer EVE by far and just seeing the trailer makes me want to reboot my character. Then again, as a former EVEer, I know trailers gloss over more colorful engagements:

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66

for sure :slight_smile:

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Maybe I’m just pessimistic, but I don’t see us being able to keep a single server populated with a dozen players 24hr/day. And as @crayfish said, you can’t sell huge battles as your hook to the game if you just can’t deliver huge battles in the first place.

If they scream HUGE BATTLES as their marketing message and when a player joins there is 10 players on the server that marketing is bound to do more harm than good.

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That’s a great article @Crayfish.

I agree the possibility of large player counts can not be the focus of the marketing.
Even if hundreds of players were guaranteed, it’s not what people really want from a game - If I make a game with hundreds of players but all you can do is walk around and look at eachother, that’s not going to get many sales.

The hook has to be the gameplay itself.

The proc gen, the seamless transitions, the possibility of hundreds of players, these are all kickers - they’re awesome attributes of the environment in which the gameplay exists, they are not the gameplay itself.

I think the hook is the gameplay which is something like “multiplayer first-person tactical spaceship combat”. Which you immediately follow up with the fact that this gameplay is occurring within a real-sized solar system ranging from planetary atmospheres to deep space with the game supporting X hundred players per server.

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69

Even 400 ships is going to feel pretty thin when you spread it across an entire system. This means the encounters need to matter and have significant consequence.

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The hook is the gameplay. But it is the gameplay at high player populations. The tactics of a low population server will be bland and repetitive because the tactical permutations are too limited.

If anything, Battlescape should have one or two servers, bringing the available player population into contact with each other other, just as EVE Online did… If the game is a hit, then add more servers, but never so many that players don’t find themselves surrounded by hundreds of others.

The game will be playable as a straight arena game with just a few players, but the real appeal is in the tactical spaceship combat that comes into its own when there are hundreds of players online. That’s the marketing hook.

My ground truth here is the ARMA 3 server I support. At low player populations, sure you can HALO into the AO by yourself and shoot enemy infantry. But when you’ve got a solid player population, you’ve got helicopters transporting you out with others to join your squad in the field. As you make that trip, there are enemy aircraft being fended off by friendly combat air patrol. When you get to the AO, you face armor, infantry, and mortars. You and your teammates are working together to clear buildings and work across open areas. You probably have guys in your squad that can take out the light armor without needing to call support. But when you bump into problems bigger than your squad, you can call in support units to deal with them. When you go down, there will be a medic who comes to your aid. When you run out of ammunition, you can call on support to fly in a crate of ammunition. You can work with others to run combat support or logistics. You can be a pilot. There can be base air traffic control, ground JTAC calling in support, armor working together - all sorts of scenarios are played out. In general, there are many more moving parts, and the dynamics of the engagements are vastly more interesting.

That’s the hook for that server. It’s the thing that you throw in people’s faces to say “This is what can happen on this server.” And it does, day after day, because people want that dynamic tactical experience.

That’s for a 60 player cooperative server. If PvP, it would devolve to a 30v30 experience, which just wouldn’t have the same dynamics. So PvP has an even harder time getting into the stratosphere of tactical experiences.

I’ll offer that ARMA 3 has lots of servers with lots of different game modes courtesy of its modding features. If Battlescape doesn’t support modding, just skip the private server stuff. It will only dilute the population of the official servers.

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They can’t sell something that they can’t guarantee @jb47394 and they can’t guarantee that even one server will be populated with hundreds of players all the time. “Hundreds of players” is a technical spec pitch at best.

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With that logic you couldn’t sell any multiplayer game at all. Makes no sense.

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You don’t sell a multiplayer game by shouting it’s a multiplayer game, maybe in the 90s or something that would have been a good pitch.

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Who said that?
They sell the game by telling people that its a space shooter with true scale solar system and big multiplayer battles.
The idea that you can’t advertise it as offering large battles because the servers might not be at capacity at times is bonkers.
Thats like someone buying a chess game and complaining to the company that sold it that nobody wants to play with him.

75

Okay, let’s be organised about this: Lists!

Selling points of Infinity Battlescape:

  • MMO
  • Seamless ground-to-space transitions
  • First person
  • Spaceships
  • Combat focused gameplay
  • Teams
  • Newtonian flight model

Feel free to now rank these in importance (with any additions I forgot), but don’t forget to explain why you rank them that way!

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76

It’s idiotic and borderline false advertising, which is illegal, to sell that huge battles will be the gameplay if you very well know that the customer will not get that experience.

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On Arma 3 website they lead with:

[quote]Experience true combat gameplay in a massive military sandbox.
Authentic, diverse, open - Arma 3 sends you to war.[/quote]

On their Steam store page its:

[quote]Experience true combat gameplay in a massive military sandbox.
Deploying a wide variety of single- and multiplayer content, over 20 vehicles and 40 weapons, and limitless opportunities for content creation, this is the PC’s premier military game.
Authentic, diverse, open - Arma 3 sends you to war.[/quote]

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78

How do you know that the customer won’t get that experience?
The company is not selling an experience anyway, it is selling the software that enables that experience.
As long as the software is capable this would be no problem at all. Claiming that this would be illegal false advertising is blatantly wrong.
What constitutes false advertising is somewhat well defined and this certainly isn’t one of that. Advertising “battles with up to 200 players” isn’t the same as claiming “we have XXXX number of players daily to play against” (if it really was a lie).

BTW: I create advertisings for a living so I think I know what I am talking about. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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79

Two words make a lot of difference here: “experience up to 200-players battles” vs “experience 200-players battles” :slight_smile:

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80

EXPERIANCE UP TO 200 PLAYERS IN A SINGLE BATTLE!*

* ‘Up to 200 players’ is a range of values including, but not exclusive to, ‘0 players’.

:wink:

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