Beach bloggin’ open thread
Grokmoo and I are at the beach with a friend for the rest of the weekend, so our postings may be more sporadic than usual. At least we have a laptop and a neighbor’s free WiFi connection to leech off of. This, however, is an open thread like all of the others, and I know there’s more news than usual that you guys just can’t wait to talk about.
But first, I have a question of my own for you guys. Supreme Commander is a great value. I spent $40 for it several months ago and I’m still on GPGnet basically every day, for free. Someone has to pay to operate these servers. I also see multiple GPG employees speaking in chat and the forums everyday. Somebody has to pay these employees. But Supreme Commander doesn’t run off the MMORPG model; all of the money they’re ever going to get from you they get at the time of purchase, and then they have to run the online services for years later, for free. So my question is:
Loading …(And I’m sure GPG will be very interested in the results of this poll!)
June 30th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
If they started charging then someone would go off and make a free alternative.
TBH, I don’t really care about most of the features. I just want it to let me play other people.
Alot more ongoing development goes into maintaining persistent online worlds. I wouldn’t consider that a fair comparison.
June 30th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
I actually think this would be a great model for a game like SupCom. I would gladly pay $5-10 per month on the following conditions:
1. New units, guaranteed at least one unit per month
2. New maps, made playable in ranked games
3. Galactic war so many people seem to talk about on the forums.
June 30th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
While I think all features should be kept free (custom games, using the Vault, etc.), I honestly think that GPGNet is quickly becoming valuable enough to start paying for…I think that 4.95 USD is enough for a monthly fee. Hell, you could even encourage people to play in the ranked games…the top 100 players wouldn’t have to pay a fee if they stayed in their positions for a month. :P
Blarg. That wouldn’t work at all…
June 30th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Well, I don’t think that GPGnet would be successful charging for access. What they should do is sell games via GPGnet like Valve does with Steam.
June 30th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
I don’t think GPGNet can do that. It was probably developed for direct support with Supreme Commander, and meant to be applied to any other games GPG decide to create, but not for distributing massive files (mods/maps/tools/patches I understand, but there is a big difference between a map less than a megabyte in size and a demo that’s two gigabytes in size…). They’ve already mentioned how downloading custom maps at the beginning of custom games takes up too much bandwidth, haven’t they?
June 30th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
>9000
June 30th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
You can only have 30 downloads per day from the Map Vault as well I think (which is reasonable of course). GPGnet has some neat features but I can’t say I’d be willing to pay extra for it. It should really become some kind of MMORTS with added value (a lot more than just Galactic Wars) if I would consider paying a monthly fee.
June 30th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
If they started charging for GPGnet I’d just play via IP or not at all. The subscription bullshit is the *only* reason I haven’t tried WoW yet. They make way too much off subscriptions, more than they need to, so I’m against Blizzard morally. :P
June 30th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
If there was any game in the world that I would pay a monthly fee for atm it would be SupCom. But the simple fact is that I won’t pay a monthly fee for any game. Ever.
I am very picky about what games I buy. And I only get games that I know will be extremely replayable, so I get the most bang for my buck. I have nothing against monthly fees. But there just isn’t a game out there that is worth paying ten times as much money in the long run than a non-fee based game.
BTW
I play one MMORPG. I’ll give you three guesses what it is.
June 30th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Since this an open thread…. I am #1 in 2v2 yay me (:
June 30th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Total_inhalation… WoW by any chance? :P
Anyway, I wouldn’t pay for it because I really don’t like games that have a subscription fee, I don’t play any of the mmorpgs that you have to pay for more than once, because in my opinion it’s not worth it. say you pay 6 pound every month to play WoW, you play for 2 years, that’s 144 pounds, I would never pay that for a game, especially when I can play the free (not as good, but free) guild wars. So if supreme commander decided to change to subscription game, I’d quit and play something not as good like c&c 3
June 30th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Another point to make about WoW, following T2A’s comment, to what I know about 7 million people play the game, this might be bullshit but hey, I’ll continue, if 7 million people play the game and all pay 6 pounds per month, that’s 44 million pounds, why on earth would they need that much money?
June 30th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Cyde Weys - I don’t think you will really care but I found a website that is using your image and semi-personal information in a rather derogatory way. I can’t seem to find a way to contact you directly and I hesitate to post the link here without knowing if it is ok with you first. It really isn’t a big deal at all. But if you want the link you can email me at the address which I use to post here (I assume you have access to it).
June 30th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Heh TI I googled and found it it’s just ED who cares…
July 1st, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Total_Inhalation: I’m gonna guess Guild Wars.
July 1st, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Wuped=true
Well I did say it was no big deal or anything, but I would have wanted to know if it was me
Gryphyn=true
If an MMORPG like GW can do it for free, I see no reason why a GPGnet couldn’t. To the best
of my knowledge, after a game is connected nearly all of the bandwidth is directly between the players, bypassing GPGnet
entirely. So bandwidth costs are significantly lower than you would think.
I would also like to note that when I wrote “Wuped=true” and “Gryphyn=true” It reminded me of the syntax of programing language. I got really carried away and wrote my entire response in the format of C++ source code. At first I was going to just post it like that but my better judgement got ahold of me. For the sake of boredom and geekitude I am still going to append it to my post so here it is:
#include
#include
using namespace std;
int main() {
bool Wuped;
bool Gryphyn;
string response;
Wuped= true;
Gryphyn= true;
if(Wuped=true);
{cout
July 1st, 2007 at 9:24 pm
I guess I didn’t account for the fact that a lot of the characters in C++ apparently conflict with HTML. When I used certain symbols in my post the blog thought I was trying to tell it to do stuff and the result was gibberish. Just ignore everything in my above post from “I would like to note…” onward.
Also, I am retarded.
July 2nd, 2007 at 5:03 am
That’s why you use printf(…) :D
July 2nd, 2007 at 10:34 am
>Nothing at all; it’s not worth paying for
This is the only one that truly fit, although I hate to say it’s ‘not worth’ paying for. They provide a nice service. I would use it if they went to the free model + $ for premium, but I’d never pay for the premium. I would simply stop playing any ranked (which I’m not doing actively right now anyways) and just direct IP with my friends (which we are doing every weekend or so).
July 2nd, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Most people who own SupCom don’t even play online competitively. The only useful part of GPGNet (when it’s not being a buggy piece of crap that doesn’t fully load) is the Vault and of course the auto-patching when there’s an update to the game. The rest of it has no bearing at all on me or many SupCom owners, especially if they’d go back to how multiplayer gaming was done back in the day where you would use a free match-making/game-hosting tool like QuakeSpy/GameSpy3D (not GameSpy Arcade, mind you) or All-Seeing Eye to link you and your buddies up. Very simple, very effective, and costs nothing because all it does it match players up. The bandwidth is all on the players’ end of things just like when a game is launched via GPGNet.
So yeah, the only use for GPGNet is for ladder play which doesn’t really impact the majority of SupCom owners, truthfully, and the Vault and honestly given how crappy the map editor is, they could do without the Vault too.
July 4th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
THIS IS A TRAVESTY !! making an rts game have monthly fees is DISGUSTING ! this should never have been brought up. Monthly fees are for MMOs ONLY and I never play them because of this ….i feel SICK just thinking of paying per month for a game AAAHHH the horror …the horror…th..e. .h.orro….r…. *hides in a corner shivering*
PS i apologise for any spelling and gramatical errors