I was thinking about the drip-feeding of features you get in MMOs today and wondered if the very fact that it isn't finished yet is keeping LFS active and fun.

Normally in a game, you get a private alpha, a public beta and then the final product, with very little change from that final product once its released, bar the odd patch to fix bugs.

With LFS however, we are all forced to play the evolving alpha as that's the only one available. It's in essence similar to the setup MMOs have in that they keep thinking up and releasing extra content as a way of keeping players interested and playing.

Now I'm not in any way suggesting the devs are doing this deliberately just to keep hold of an audience, but I can't help but think if the whole development process of S1 and S2 hadn't happened and S3 was suddenly thrust upon us it wouldn't have proved anywhere near as popular 5 years or so on as LFS has.

Don't get me wrong, I *love* the fact that we can get excited about a new patch every few months it just struck me how different it is to something like GTR2 for example.

Well, I play Eve online (my character has 34 mill skill points ) and have to pay a monthly subscription, in order for the developers to keep me (and many thousands other) playing and paying monthly subscriptions they have to update content on a regular basis. (Or god help them :P)

For LFS we have all paid for S2 and can play on any server, whenever, 24/7 for absolutely nothing. So as the developers have already got our cash and have the kind heart to let us compete together for free online using their majestic software they will, and should not be, in any rush to add content.

P.S. anyone want to buy some +4 memory implants?

im really getting annoyed that the final product will never be released...
i think that this is a similar situation like duke nukem

Quote from maxelmar :

im really getting annoyed that the final product will never be released...
i think that this is a similar situation like duke nukem

You are wrong. I don't have time to explain but I'm sure others will do it soon.

Quote from maxelmar :

im really getting annoyed that the final product will never be released...
i think that this is a similar situation like duke nukem

Maybe but for the difference that Duke Nukem was a P.O.S.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

I can't help but think if the whole development process of S1 and S2 hadn't happened and S3 was suddenly thrust upon us it wouldn't have proved anywhere near as popular 5 years or so on as LFS has.

If it was like S2 but with all the less-good bits improved, then why not? People still play GPL and NR2003.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

Don't get me wrong, I *love* the fact that we can get excited about a new patch every few months it just struck me how different it is to something like GTR2 for example.

The main difference being that GTR gets repackaged every so often and each time the title changes and you have to buy it again...

Well, no one can be a bigger MMO gamer than me

Look at my full free list of MMORPGs : http://www.xfire.com/xf/module ... postorder=asc&start=0

I'm currently playing RF Online and Perfect World (both are free)

no gunz online? i admit, ive been on silkroad, my bro can't stop going on it ever since he got a wolf or something like that

Quote :

Maybe but for the difference that Duke Nukem was a P.O.S.

I can't believe people actually waited for a new Duke Nukem.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

I was thinking about the drip-feeding of features you get in MMOs today and wondered if the very fact that it isn't finished yet is keeping LFS active and fun.

Since the LFS business model is infact content, I suppose that you really can compare LFS and an MMO quite well!

Quote from AlienT. :

Well, I play Eve online (my character has 34 mill skill points ) and have to pay a monthly subscription, in order for the developers to keep me (and many thousands other) playing and paying monthly subscriptions they have to update content on a regular basis. (Or god help them :P)

Bleh, I've been doing sooo well to avoid EVE for the last few months (I do get rather addicted to it, more so than WoW), but I think you may have just tipped me over the edge and persuaded me to start playing again!

Eeek!

Quote from maxelmar :

im really getting annoyed that the final product will never be released...
i think that this is a similar situation like duke nukem

Well, no it's nothing like Duke Nukem, in that no game, or even alpha has ever materialised. There's no Duke Nukem community on the edge of their seats about new guns in patch Y which will improve even more the game they've already been enjoying for years,

Quote from AlienT. :

P.S. anyone want to buy some +4 memory implants?

Would you make a good discount for a LFS mate?
I need cybernetics to lvl4 1st anyway

Quote from Crashgate3 :

Well, no it's nothing like Duke Nukem, in that no game, or even alpha has ever materialised. There's no Duke Nukem community on the edge of their seats about new guns in patch Y which will improve even more the game they've already been enjoying for years,

We've been sitting on the edge of our seats for years now waiting for the improvements that you have to pull the slide back to inject the bullet into the chamber rather than just flatinjecting it in

LFG - Live For Guns

:P

CR

Quote from Crashgate3 :

I was thinking about the drip-feeding of features you get in MMOs today and wondered if the very fact that it isn't finished yet is keeping LFS active and fun.

Normally in a game, you get a private alpha, a public beta and then the final product, with very little change from that final product once its released, bar the odd patch to fix bugs.

With LFS however, we are all forced to play the evolving alpha as that's the only one available. It's in essence similar to the setup MMOs have in that they keep thinking up and releasing extra content as a way of keeping players interested and playing.

Now I'm not in any way suggesting the devs are doing this deliberately just to keep hold of an audience, but I can't help but think if the whole development process of S1 and S2 hadn't happened and S3 was suddenly thrust upon us it wouldn't have proved anywhere near as popular 5 years or so on as LFS has.

Don't get me wrong, I *love* the fact that we can get excited about a new patch every few months it just struck me how different it is to something like GTR2 for example.

Yeah good points. I think it's a great business model because it's just human nature that we enjoy looking forward to new things and improvements all the time. I mean some of us have been around since many years and still get exited about every patch. If the perfect S3 ha been released in 2002 I'm sure most would have stopped playing by now for lack of freshness.

I guess what really makes it work is the general quality of the releases. If LFS was as buggy as pretty much 99% of all other games out there then we might see ourselves as paying beta testers but instead we really are closer to MMO players, as you said, except that we pay a lot less.

I like it on many levels, becuase if you were to drop me into LFS at it's finished state, chances are I'd give up "cuz it's too hard", but because I've been playing for so long, I've been introduced into changes gradually, which I think makes the learning curve easier. Sort of a dumb way to look at it, but it really is sort of training all current licence users gradually, rather than throwing a 2 tonne brick at them and expecting them to catch, it's throwing a lot of 1 lb bricks, and us building a foundation.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

With LFS however, we are all forced to play the evolving alpha as that's the only one available.

Not forced. We chose to play it.

Quote :

It's in essence similar to the setup MMOs have in that they keep thinking up and releasing extra content as a way of keeping players interested and playing.

Well that's a setup not only MMOs have - several games, even offline ones catered in that exact same way (either as clearly episodic [HL2 recently] or official expansion packs). Some more rigid (especially if the game is linear) and some more flexible.

I was sort of expecting this thread to be the way that some players treat LFS and the stats in LFSW. Playing and doing the same thing over and over just to watch the bars/stat grow (check some of the stat charts - insane amounts of km/laps driven on the oval on a ~24/7 basis by some people) which is one of the catching points of online RPGs. Then you got the cruisers with their attempt to basically create a game within the game that uses the mechanics of an RPG (only that instead of XPs they only use GPs it seem).