Zacfoldor
Gold Member
Think of gaas as a closed system.
At launch the system is at maximum order. For marathon we have launched in a high energy highly organized state.
In this game entropy manifests as boredom, attrition, and frustration....and eventually technical debt as you run into queueing issues.
To combat this inevitable decay, energy has to be pumped in. The only way to affect entropy is to pump in energy. Work hours. Money.
So really any gaas is like this. The amount of energy needed to reduce entropy is based on how efficient the game theory is at retaining players. Thus it's important how efficient the company is at turning their resources into the type of energy the game needs and even more important is how much energy the game needs overall.
They are pumping in massive amounts of energy, hundreds of developers and resources diverted from D2 to keep entropy from overtaking Marathon in the new few months.
Thus, it's easy to see what they are doing behind the scenes now. There is only one possible option. They need to make the game theory more efficient at retaining players so they can dump less energy into the game and have the same effect on the entropy.
That means a mechanical overhaul or new modes that will appeal to a wider audience and keep existing players engaged for longer. Other games have done this.
...but that's the rub. Most other games in this state just die. Its WAY harder to turn around than to launch in an efficient state. Now they have the unenviable job of remaking the game, potentially alienating the existing players, and appealing to new ones.
They need a system they can dump work in and see immediate affect on the community. So they are searching for that efficiency now in what gameplay options they could add.
The problem is that once a system begins to succumb to entropy, turning it around is hard as fuck. Not the norm. Odds are it is unlikely to happen for Marathon. It will require massive reinvestment and a very high joule level of energy too because the problem isn't just they need to pump in energy. It's that the energy they are pumping in doesn't have much affect. So they have to add a LOT of it for a little return. So they need to make the game more efficient AND pump more resources into it to turn it around. If they had launched in an efficient state there would be no need for this. Launching in an inefficient state where adding tons of work into the game doesn't really reduce entropy, could be considered questionable game design.
One thing Bungie should do is lower their quality standard. This would allow them to create maps quicker. This would allow them access to AI toolkits and new technology that would create good enough content as long as its novel. That's what this genre needs. Freshness. Glacial developer paces are no longer acceptable in the gaas space.
At launch the system is at maximum order. For marathon we have launched in a high energy highly organized state.
In this game entropy manifests as boredom, attrition, and frustration....and eventually technical debt as you run into queueing issues.
To combat this inevitable decay, energy has to be pumped in. The only way to affect entropy is to pump in energy. Work hours. Money.
So really any gaas is like this. The amount of energy needed to reduce entropy is based on how efficient the game theory is at retaining players. Thus it's important how efficient the company is at turning their resources into the type of energy the game needs and even more important is how much energy the game needs overall.
They are pumping in massive amounts of energy, hundreds of developers and resources diverted from D2 to keep entropy from overtaking Marathon in the new few months.
Thus, it's easy to see what they are doing behind the scenes now. There is only one possible option. They need to make the game theory more efficient at retaining players so they can dump less energy into the game and have the same effect on the entropy.
That means a mechanical overhaul or new modes that will appeal to a wider audience and keep existing players engaged for longer. Other games have done this.
...but that's the rub. Most other games in this state just die. Its WAY harder to turn around than to launch in an efficient state. Now they have the unenviable job of remaking the game, potentially alienating the existing players, and appealing to new ones.
They need a system they can dump work in and see immediate affect on the community. So they are searching for that efficiency now in what gameplay options they could add.
The problem is that once a system begins to succumb to entropy, turning it around is hard as fuck. Not the norm. Odds are it is unlikely to happen for Marathon. It will require massive reinvestment and a very high joule level of energy too because the problem isn't just they need to pump in energy. It's that the energy they are pumping in doesn't have much affect. So they have to add a LOT of it for a little return. So they need to make the game more efficient AND pump more resources into it to turn it around. If they had launched in an efficient state there would be no need for this. Launching in an inefficient state where adding tons of work into the game doesn't really reduce entropy, could be considered questionable game design.
One thing Bungie should do is lower their quality standard. This would allow them to create maps quicker. This would allow them access to AI toolkits and new technology that would create good enough content as long as its novel. That's what this genre needs. Freshness. Glacial developer paces are no longer acceptable in the gaas space.
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