Competition in the MMO Marketplace

One of the operations of any functional capitalist economy is competition within the marketplace for goods and services. The underlying premise being that if company A is providing a good or service inefficiently, or is of lower quality, when company B enters the market and provides an equivalent good or service more efficiently, or of higher quality, company B will beat out company A. Many of the current problems with Eve Online are reducible to the fact that CCP has no real competition. Simply put, the reason that it feels like CCP isn’t even trying anymore is because they aren’t, and because they’ve realized that they don’t have to.

While there are a plethora of other MMOs on the marketplace, none of them are really competing for the niche appeal that Eve Online has. There are good economic reasons that almost no one is currently even trying to compete directly against Eve Online. The only recent exception to this rule is Albion Online. Developing an MMO is incredibly expensive and is a very risky business proposition. Countless “WoW killers” have been developed over the years and have completely fallen flat, and those are games that were marketed to a much wider audience. It’s difficult to sell the concept of a niche MMO to investors or a publisher because it almost always doesn’t make good business sense.

After all, why would anyone take the risk on developing a niche MMO when they can just develop literally any other game for the same amount of capital, market it to a much broader audience for consumption and as a result have a much more likely chance at seeing a return on that investment? Games that were roughly comparable and developed around the same time as Eve Online, such as Ultima Online and Asheron’s Call, were created in the pre-World of Warcraft era when the entire MMO genre was in its infancy and no one had any real expectations for the profitability of these games. This means that the only real groups that are currently willing to take the risks of making a more niche MMO title are primarily indie developers on a smaller budget, or studios that have a successful pre-existing IP.

A Challenger Appears

It was for this reason that when Albion Online was released in 2017, I was excited not just because I would have a new game that was appealing for me to play, but that it was a potential source of competition and that it might force CCP to actually try fixing Eve Online. While Albion Online ultimately failed for reasons I’ll get into later, if you’re looking for a precedent of competition working in the MMO marketplace, look no further than Wargaming’s World of Tanks in early 2014 to early 2016.

World of Tanks had a number of similarities to draw parallels with Eve Online. One of the most notable similarities was that it was essentially the only vehicular combat MMO that had achieved any long-term popularity or financial success. Three years later after its release at the end of 2013, the title was still incredibly profitable, but it had a number of glaring flaws with its game design, map design, and game mechanics. Certain nationalities were much more competitive than other nationalities, entire classes of vehicles had a disproportionate win rates, and certain sides of maps and spawns massively favored a certain side.

A couple of notable contenders began to design games in an attempt to enter what had now been proven a successful marketplace. Gaijin, the developer of War Thunder, was in the process of expanding their arcade air combat title to include tank combat. Obsidian Entertainment, best known for developing Fallout: New Vegas, had been hired to use the much more modern Cryengine in order to develop a game that was mechanically similar to World of Tanks featuring vehicles from the modern era.

Faced with the possibility of losing a significant portion of its market share, Wargaming started to actually improve their game in order to retain customers. Several new game modes were introduced to give players a wider variety of content. New lines of tanks were added to the game that allowed for a broader spectrum of viable play styles. Existing classes were buffed or nerfed such that every class and line was much more relatively equipped to deal with their peers, while still being unique and allowing for a variety of different game play. Improvements were made to the shell accuracy system and the impact of rng was reduced. Maps that had disproportionate win rates were outright removed from rotation, or were greatly reworked, and a number of new maps were added. Premium vehicles sold for cash released during this time frame were among the most balanced ones that have ever been produced.

Average to high skill players were given the opportunity to compete in weekly tournaments that paid out a significant amount of in game currency. Clans received the stronghold mode that allowed for another mode of progression and earned in game currency. Month-long events were released that awarded high skill players with exclusive vehicles. The esports scene saw its prize pools increase massively and feeder leagues were given greater rewards to incentivize greater participation and team development.

The global map (the equivalent of Eve Online’s sov map) was given additional regions for players to fight over to earn valuable scarce resources. The payout of daily, weekly, and monthly missions were increased to incentivize players to invest their time and effort into completing objectives. Managing the operations of, and competing as the second-in-command of the most powerful clan in North America was some of the most fun I’ve had in gaming. The game certainly had its share of problems, many of which have never been adequately addressed, but on the whole, the meta and endgame in particular during this timeframe was the healthiest it’s ever been in the history of the game. As a result, Wargaming’s investment was ultimately successful in keeping average player count stable despite competing games vying for player interest.

The Winner and Still Champion

Having said that, there are very good reasons why I wouldn’t recommend World of Tanks to anyone in its current state. Ultimately, War Thunder’s mechanics were tedious and their tanks sim failed to make a significant dent in Wargaming market share. My.com, the financiers of Armored Warfare, released in the game in what was essentially an alpha state. Armored Warfare had all the problems of the worst early access titles, and none of the upsides. Consumers considered it to be a less functional clone of World of Tanks, and as a result Armored Warfare died before it was even born.

Wargaming was now in a state where they had no meaningful competition and started becoming increasingly lazy in their development. Almost all the premiums vehicles released in this timeframe were either better than their peers, or were blatantly overpowered. New tank trees were almost always better than existing lines, and narrowed the scope of viable play styles. Map design suffered as well. New maps were increasingly reliant on three corridor lanes similar to the design of maps found in MOBAs like League of Legends or Dota 2. Funding for the tournament scene was slashed, and game modes were introduced where the only way to successfully complete objectives was to rig matches.

I mentioned Albion Online earlier because it’s incredibly relevant to this discussion as it relates to Eve Online, and ties it up nicely. Sandbox Interactive’s Albion Online was an attempt to combine the economy and sandbox world pvp sandbox of Eve Online, the movement and pve mechanics of Diablo, and the setting and dungeons of Runescape. If that sounds incredibly ambitious, it’s because it was.

There were a number of things that Albion Online did right that were compelling and novel. Hellgates combined pve with pvp that made for tense and enjoyable gameplay. The geography by which the central trade hub Carleon functioned as a Jita/Thera mix and was accessible only by traveling through the Albion equivalent of lowsec or nullsec created a situation where trade runs through hostile space were rewarding, compelling, and necessary. Roaming or ganking in the equivalent of nullsec/wormhole space was fun and rewarding. Ultimately the game failed because it was unable to deliver the compelling features and mechanics of any one of those three games in a way that had any long term depth. The fact that ex-CCP Grayscale was hired to be one of the primary developers likely didn’t help things either.

Cheating in Albion Online was incredibly easy. Cheat Engine of all things was somehow not detected for the entirety of the beta releases and for the first few months of full release. Players would speedhack to complete trade runs with zero risk, and would use zoom hacks to evade or hunt targets. Open world pvp was unplayably laggy at any scale that would be remotely comparable to Eve. The sovereignty system was ultimately determined by a 5v5 control point game mode played exclusively by the primary guild team that had been fed levels and gear by the entirety of their guild. The leveling and progression system heavily favored those in large guilds. The crafting and resource gathering systems were easy to abuse.

Certain rare area of effect weapons that were balanced for the 5v5 game mode were massively imbalanced in open world combat and could outright wipe groups. Stacking effects of some weapons could stunlock players with zero chance of escape. A nearly indestructible piece of furniture designed for instanced player owned property was placeable in open world nullsec zones. This piece of furniture blocked the exit of players allowing for area of effect spells to be mass stacked on one location and instantly kill large groups traveling through the equivalent of stargates. While these mechanics were hilarious to abuse and grief with in the short term, it was evident that the game had no real long term future.

Much like Wargaming with World of Tanks, CCP is back to being in a position where they have no real competition for their niche. That’s a damn shame, because while Albion was fun I had zero desire to play Eve Online, and was very was likely going to quit if Albion was successful long term. CCP’s management retains a skeleton crew of actual developers and designers. This is why we see zero iteration on any of Eve’s features that are broken on release and get bandaid half measures or broken promises years later. If it seems like CCP Games isn’t trying, it’s because they’re not.

We could playing a game with highsec wardecs that are functional and reward game play other than sitting on the Jita undock, and new players are given a functional UI and not the mess that is the default overview. We could be in a Faction Warfare and Lowsec that provides alliance level income and organic conflict generators. We might be able to have brawls in wormhole space that aren’t entirely based around FAX retrieving cap sticks from a DST. Sovereignty could be tweeked such that the optimal fleets for defending or capturing are based around holding and contesting a grid, and not entirely based around ECM, the most hated mechanic in the game, or gimmick interceptor builds.

CCP doesn’t have to do any of this and they realize it. As long as the current means of monetization continues to reach targeted profits and subscriptions don’t fall off massively, nothing will change. CCP has won Eve Online.