Bill Roper – Computer Game Poison?
The ugly way Roper drove Hellgate: London and Flagship into bankruptcy is legendary. The greedy subscription model for an action RPG Diablo clone was an exceptionally bad idea. His constant arguing and fighting against respecs was rancid icing on the rotten cake.
In light of that, it was a real head scratcher when Cryptic hired him and made him Executive Producer of Champions Online. I must admit, while I enjoyed a lot of things about Champions Online, I’d been waiting for and worrying about Roper’s influence.
With the full opening of the Champions Online microtransaction cash shop (C-Store), those fears were apparently well founded.
I never understood where the heck Cryptic got off adding a cash shop to a full price + monthly subscription game. That’s not just double dipping, that’s triple dipping. I am fine with meta-game functions having an extra cost (server transfers, character renames, etc.), but actual game content should not have a fee in a subscription based game.
Cryptic’s constant resistance to making a decent respec system for Champions Online had boggled my mind since the beginning. Any kind of build/spec type advancement system needs a good respec feature. CO’s fully open ability system absolutely REQUIRES it. The flexibility is great, but with flexibility comes the ability to easily and quickly screw up your character.
When I read the details of the C-Store, it all became clear: $12.50 for a character respec. They designed a system that effectively requires frequent respecing, and then charge $12.50 per respec. Amazing. And with almost weekly patches that dramatically change (nerf) abilities, it is impossible to know how a power you have today will perform tomorrow.
In most MMOs, respecing your character either has quests or a gold cost equal to an hour or so of game time (or less). But in Champions Online, you pay $12.50. Unreal. Absolutely unreal.
If CO were a stock, I’d be selling short right now. The population is plummeting, and the decision making behind this C-Store does not inspire confidence at all. One can only hope that Roper will go back to voice acting and writing manuals after he kills this game.
Champions Online is down to $10 now. Wow. Roper kills games dead.
But then they come back from the gwave and eat us in our sleep:
http://hanbitgame-espresso.blogspot.com/
So they are going to re-release the game in the US. I wonder if they will fix the brain dead business model.
I really don’t think they gave the game the gentle chainsaw it needed to be good. : /
With the per-character drop system, I always wondered why they didn’t implement premium drop tables and present them as that instead of the “s” word. Then again I felt that way about every insane decision.
“Bad design is bad.”
Instead of what “s” word? I’m curious!
Oh no no no “subscription”. It’s a death knell for non-diku clones. It’s as deadly as a grey zombie that bites you in the butt when your back is turned for 1 hp worth of damage.
Selling time-limited microfeatures has the same function as a “optional” subscription while being better press.
Bloody hellgate. “Give us 10 dollars a month to carry and use a horadric cube you used to get for free in Diablo 2.”