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.”
Called it ever since he got a job at Cryptic Studios. I seriously wonder how that job interview went. “So Mr. Roper, tell us about your previous work experience.” “Well, I was the CEO of Flagship Studios, which, through my terrible decisions, I ran it into the ground and left over 50 employees who never saw severance pay.” “Oh…well, we’ll call you if something else comes up–” “I worked for Blizzard.” “You’re hired!”
I mean, they even brought Ivan Sullic into the mix. You know, the writer for Hellgate: London? Which should tell you something right off the bat, considering the story for the game was beyond terrible (I even had him E-Mail me at one time when we were working up a storm at writing our “hypercritical” stories at flagshipped.com over his lack of being able to distinguish the difference between direct quoting and paraphrasing). Dude goes out and tries to bring in people from the CoX forums to join CO. When he gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he’s just snarky about it.
I don’t know how long it will take before the toting of “I worked for Blizzard” will lose steam amongst developers as meaning “I am a video game developer god.” These are the guys who couldn’t handle the company structure of success at Blizzard and then left out of personal ambition. Why Roper is even allowed to touch video games to this day is beyond me. We may as well get Derek Smart and John Romero together for an F-Team event of the ages; who can create the crappiest game and yet spin it to be the Baby Jesus of the millennium?
Yeah, I know, I was late to the party.
Hahahahahaha. Truth.
RE: Agamemnon’s fly on the wall of Roper’s interview => ROFLCOPTER!
I wonder the same thing. How many abject failures does the “I worked for Blizzard” entry on the resume make up for?
Does the magnitude of the failure matter? I mean Roper has 2 or 3 huge failures now – depending on how much credit/blame he gets for Star Trek Online.
Dude, you are killing me. Hahahahahaha.
Since you were involved with Flagshipped.com you gotta tell me more stories. I thought that was one of the best game-specific critical web sites ever.
But the articles wrote themselves!
I dislike blaming Roper for anything except wanting to be e-famous. Why get mad at a talking head?
It was Tyler Thompson, perhaps, that seemed like a e-drama queen if I’m remembering this correctly.
One comment by some anon (so just a rumor) claimed Tyler complained and him fired at Gamestop for mentioning how many MMOs burn out, like Auto Assault.
In one patch they accelerated the EXP given out on the Test Realm along with some other bonuses for playing on it – I think unlimited respecs. This made the test realm players happier – but obviously didn’t stimulate too many people to switch over if any.
Thompson then stormed on the forums with a hate post to the universe, about how it was his decision to do those changes, and how since the test realm population didn’t grow, it was probably the wrong decision. He stated this in a condescending and douchey way – I’m sorry I can’t find an exact quote but the Wayback Machine is really bad at caching forums.
It’s like, hey guy, around 1 to 2% of your players are gonna play there, and another ~1 to 2% of that will post about it.
It’s unbelievable so much money and time was poored into a game without a design document.
Saddest thing ever: I have an Internet Friend who wants to see photographic evidence of Roper eating some sushi. Her alcoholic mother wants to see it very badly as well. Bill: if you can send me a photo of you eating sushi I will be eternally grateful and be your bestest e-buddy for life.
I hate typos so much :<
Another design decision that was wacky was making the randomly generated levels "realistic" – a sewer or subway or street that goes in one direction. Diablo 3 will use square nodes that can connect in a variety to one another in four directions; why not make city blocks in a similar way?
The only thing truly nice was the art design on the characters and weapons…. and Somethingawful still made fun of us for those too. :<
… and they didn't make dyes a basic item in single or multi-player, so even that was tainted. :<
Why would they want a photo of Roper eating sushi? Is there a story there?
Lets hear more of these Flagship stories!
Well, you see Bill has on numerous occasions (every chance he gets) in interviews mentioned a love of sushi. Gamers have thus dubbed him as some kind of sushi monster.
In one of those many many many (many) previews there was an actual honest to god photo of him sitting at a table eating sushi with some of his homies. Since flagshipped.com is dead, and the Wayback Machine is completely unreliable with archiving PHP (and is not very reliable with images to begin with), that photo is now lost. Like tears in the rain.
Anyway, because the Internet is Really Really Mean, this morphed further into a reference to Jabba. One of the artists in the community released a sketch of this. I felt compelled to splash some color onto it due to having too much free time; since it’s easiest for me to find I’ll link to that version:
http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n151/malignityomega/FlagshipPics/Roper.jpg
So very mean. The guy standing next to him was one of those Fan Boys who defended everything Flagship Studios did. Since it was a small pool (~<600 people who'd talk), pretty much everyone knew everyone else.
Um, while linking media here's a Summoner with her ninja outfit on with medium graphic settings:
http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n151/malignityomega/FlagshipPics/NinjaEel.jpg
The eel gun shot eels that would attach to monsters and shock them, draining life over time. It was one of the best parts of the game.
The Feed System violated this class as well – Summoners were the one class that'd infinitely get more dps from skill points – you could increase the number of minions you could summon with them. ~33 guys was the max. But you'd need to lock off some of your mana to summon them.
So you'd pump Willpower like crazy – but you'd need Accuracy and some Strength to carry better (eel) guns. It would have been much more fun if equipment was just limited by level – walk around with the best equipment you can at a time, along with the largest army you can support at a time.
It's supposed to be an Adolescent Power Fantasy, right?