Saying There's No Money in PvP Isn't True

How Can Daybreak NOT Make Money off of PvP with THIS Model??!

So, I've decided to just state the obvious here during the introduction instead of devolving this into a conversation of a complete ineptitude of marketing philosophy, contemporary obliviousness, and sheer ignorance on behalf Daybreak or it's staff. I don't pretend to know how they've arrived at this decision, and since I think DCUO happens to be a FANTASTIC product that is very well put together, I think it would be better just to say some people are bewildered and leave it at that. The subheading is enough in my opinion.

Math Doesn't Lie

Below is an interesting review of research article published by Gamesbrief in regards to a statistical analysis by Kongregate published in 2012. This is the type of research that can be definitively linked to the rise in the pvp genre we see running rampant in gaming today. These statistics have undoubtedly inflated even more over the years.

In summary, the article below states that incorporating a pvp element into your game could potentially increase your earning power by 510%...in 2012 mind you. Again, it could be even more by today's standards and trends e.g. Evo, Fornite, Esports, et cetera.

http://www.gamesbrief.com/2014/08/pvp-could-increase-game-revenue-by-510/

The Rise of Mobile Gaming

Some of the biggest and most profitable games for mobile devices are (you guessed it) entirely pvp focused. Google the most profitable mobile games to date and you'll see all the proof you need. At this point in the conversation, and with the elephant in the room, there's no point in linking 10-12 different articles. The entire gaming industry knows that there is MILLIONS and MILLIONS of dollars to be made in the pvp genre. It would be like linking articles saying that hungry people like food or winter is cold and summer is warm.

Moving ON....

I am not attempting to propose ways to fix pvp. I played it addictively 5-6 years ago, have got back into the game over the past year, and have been pleasantly surprised with many aspects of the game here and there. The point of this topic, is to point out the fallacy of this "official statement" from Daybreak saying that they do not see how they can make money in pvp.
The fault DOES NOT lie in pvp, but in it's application and marketing. It is just.that.simple. They either need some new talent or need to put their subjectivity aside and come together as a unit and capitalize on a part of the market being left on the table.

They are losing out on an opportunity that any fresh grad student can see with minimal to no industry experience. Such a great waste for such a great game. Get it together Daybreak.

They already know PvP can make alot of money. It's not that they don't want to fix PvP or make it better. The facts about why they can't and won't are the balance issues the revamp did. Royally screwed powers and weapons. Which means PvP and legends would need a whole new revamp. And u know that we know that they know this revamp sucks. That's why they will.not waste money fixing PvP at this time. U should be asking for another revamp is what u should be asking. Even for them to balance powers and fix weapons is way too much work for them. This revamp was close but not ready not at all. If u want PvP try another game dcuo is pve only and all about what hits harder and what power has the highest rating.

Of course they know they can. What I'm saying is this rebuttal to the community of, "We can't or haven't make or made money off pvp" is not true at all.

It's not too much work, it's not a waste of money, it's not outside their reach, and a working model was already in place years ago.

It is a flat out lie to the community, and anyone who believes that this is a legitimate reason has been deceived.

It's more of a misconception. DCUO cannot make significant money from PvP, because it's not a PvP game.

Simply put, there are PvP games and there are PvE games. Both are very popular. Many games are one, but try to include essentially a "mini-game" to placate the players interested in the opposite type. It never, ever works.

League of Legends, for example, is a very popular, very profitable PvP game. Their PvE (or players versus bots) matches are essentially garbage that most people only barely use as a tutorial. It's there, but it's not "the real game" and it doesn't grant any of the rewards the players are actually seeking.

Call of Duty is a PvP game. Yes, there is an extensive PvE campaign mode. Players do play it and get their trophies. But the reason why the game is still being played 11 months after release is not because people are re-playing the campaign; it's for the PvP. It's a PvP game, with this little nitch of a PvE element, that is pretty much optional to the actual gameplay experience.

Plenty of great PvP games out there. None of them have a strong draw for PvE players. If you don't enjoy PvP, you don't generally play those games, at least not in any substantial (or profitable) amount.

The reverse is then true. PvE games bring in a different type of player. Games like World of Warcraft have been immensely popular. And they remain 99% PvE, with a few minor PvP elements to try and placate the PvP fans. Fans of hardcore PvP would never be satisfied with PvP in WoW, because PvP in WoW requires hours upon hours of PvE grinding to hit levels and obtain the gear needed just to be remotely competitive in PvP.

That is the boat that DCUO finds themselves in. The vast majority of DCUO players (and MMO players in general) are PvE enthusiasts. While a stronger PvP element might be interesting to some of the player base, ultimately a few arenas or an open world PvP event is not going to ever compete with League of Legends, or Fortnite, or PUBG; we just will not be able to steal over those players because unless the game were 90% PvP, they would not be satisfied.

If you run a noodle restaurant, you can make it an Asian noodle house, or you can make it an Italian noodle house, but if you try to do both at the same time, you won't be able to do either well enough to make your customers happy. That is the reality of PvP and PvE. You cannot have a game that is 95% PvE and 95% PvP at the same time; one or the other will have to take the back seat.

-snips-

Agree with you on this. If I want Tacos, I hit up Taco Johns.... not Burger King, and then complain to BK that their Tacos suck and should do more with them and could make money by selling more Tacos.
The peeps that really are into PvP have found it in other games. There are still those here in DCUO that dabble in the PvP as a past time, but can anyone here (in all honesty) say that they are here in DCUO only for the PvP? I personally believe that the majority of the peeps here are PvE and that there is a PvP at all, is a nice PERK of the game; not the MAIN game.

I apologize if this doesn't make any sense.... i'm craving Tacos suddenly for some odd reason. Hard to think on a hungry stomach.

Basically a good explanation, on the red part your information is however outdated:

GT Sport was designed with the focus on PvP racing, but not advertised properly. The result was a ton of PvE players going into the game, expecting a heavy focus on PvE for whatever reason (note: the competitive races were from the start planned to be an official tournament of the FIA (International Automobile Federation) with the GT designers trying to become the official eSports tournament of that body) and finally breaking the focus. Game is getting monthly PvE updates now while the competitive mode suffers a game breaking bug that does not go away with any patch for nearly 6 months now.

So as it seems, if the "wrong" audience is storming their castle with loaded wallets, the company in charge changes the direction of the game

I wonder if your post is enough to entice OP to go introduce "wrong" demographics to the game and realize your last sentence

Doubt it. The "wrong" demographics always have been a thing around here At peak max 25% of "active players" participated in PvP in DCUO, and both devs and PvP enthusiasts alike were strutting around claiming how popular that is, while the numbers never really showed how many enjoyed PvP - "just doing it for the feats" was a massive problem around the forums in the "slackers!" discussions at nearly the same time - and while 75% just completely ignored it.

Granted, it's a good number for a not-focus-"minigame"-part of the maingame, but far from "popular" and maybe not as good as it seems considering it was tied in to the overall progression via the exclusive rewards. And the OP is completely ignoring the "potentially"-part of the monetary gain he's citing. "Potentially" can set any expected percentage to straight zero in the end.

well, the op doesn't need to know this part...

I see you're using the information I gave you. Lets at least tell the whole story before we flip data on itself.

At least for both of you. The consensus I see here is that Dcuo is not a pvp game and even the participants who did pvp did not enjoy it.

Well firstly, hybrids do exist and dcuo is one. The game trailers since the beginning has always been about where will you end up as the hero or villian, and how you will fight the opposite sides. A game about Superheros vs Villans. Even in the game cutscenes shows people influence by either side fighting each other, alluding to some form of pvp. Also even in the open world pve phase you can troll for example, healing your faction side of adds that the other side faction can kill. The game even launched a Pvp related dlc "Last Laugh" meant for pvp. So the game was definitely aware of what it was meant to be. Now I can agree that pvp side took the back burner position, but thats ok because pvp is everlasting and doesn't need quarterly updates like any pve style game do.


What dcuo also did well was not forcing you to pvp, even with feats attached to that side. What the Last Laugh screwed up on was forcing players to partake in pvp. For the time, it was a mediocre dlc, and frankly they could've released and monetized it differently than as a "DLC", but the main issue were the feats attached along with the new maps/legends. Thats not a good way to get more people in, especially when you have a few bad apples legend characters(Steel etc), maps being in rotation and the feats people need from a map is not even there, plus bugs(people think Batman and Robin BBs bug is new?? lol). Dcuo game design is not that great.

But for a game that was still favored as one(and at the time) the best f2p games in the market, we still had a small community. So to tackle those who trying to scrutinize the peak participant population for pvp as a joke or as not genuine, hold on now. Lets not act like the rest of the 75% were pve lovers lol, cause I sure do remember devs trying to figure a way to get to people at endgame quickly(nerfing content was always a huge thing. Cr tokens introduced, Ams era as a whole). Or the role players who needed the styles and have to do pve for it too. So how can we know the amount of people that enjoyed pve? I know pvp players had to force their way throught the grind for sp to be effective in pvp.

So thus ending, pvp could have definitely been monetized if they wanted too. What doesn't help its case is pvp being left unintended. Then you create a breeding field for the already toxic players to spread more of themselves, then the serious pvpers who cared leaves, on top of you not being able to put out quality for the rest of your game. Now your in fight or flight mode for money and so now pvp is the least of your concern to keep things running.

The owners of Fortnite made $3 Billion in profit this year.
Amazing because no one plays PVP anymore; according to DCUO.

So... let's compare Fortnite to DCUO? How about you compare Fortnite to Hearthstone? Hearthstone is PVP... how much was their profit? different genre, there, Ace Ventura, but I give you an A for effort. (for those of you that aren't sure... Hearthstone is a collectable card game)

If you want my opinion.... DCUO took a look at their own numbers from their own game. They saw, in their own game, how many peeps played PVP in their own game and how many played PVE in their own game. DCUO made a decision, in their own game, to focus on the things that peeps were playing in their own game.


Also, before my coffee runs out here.... Please post a link to the thread that even remotely suggests that DCUO says "no one plays PVP anywhere in the entire gaming world" or, if you can't post that link... silence yourself

You're reading too much into this.

It's not much of a rebuttal of the argument but more of a paradox now if the devs keep whatever mindset they have right now.

There's no money in PVP because of the unfixed bugs and neglected balancing.
It's neglected and unfixed because they're not a top priority because it doesn't generate that much income.

But the point of fix is still on the dev side, they're the one who can break the paradox, IF and only IF they change their mindset towards PVP.

DCUO is not a PVP-centric game and never was or will be. They don't have the ressources to turn it into one without having to suffer on the current PVE-sided income (moving devs from that part away to work on something they might not even have a clue about). Using examples like Fortnite or other PVP-centric games where the playerbase is at nearly 100% playing PvP is comparing apple to oranges. PVP is a minority in DC and was in the past even back under Spytle.

Agree, it's always a good start to point out where people already agree upon.

And compared to SWG, a game SOE closed around the release of DCUO - or one year apart or something - the hybrid approach was not...., well, not very hybrid. You had seperate PvP and PvE servers at the start, and later, after the mergers, phases. On top, the instanced content was strictly split between PvE and PvP. IMO, that conception backfired on PvP - a lot.

99% agreed - I do remember some PvE folks feeling the exclusive styles and feats as being "forced" to PvP even before the LL DLC.
(And in case your wondering about the registration date or something - this is not my first account on these forums....)

Of course - what works into the direction of PvP being done without enjoyment does work in the other direction as well. Your percentage reversal however does not quite as good: People not being at endgame does not necessarily make them hate PvE The.... let's say "static" conception of challenge has breed a number of players going into "endgame" when it is no longer endgame and someone of the league or randomly Q'd can carry them. I'd agree however that these.... "effortless" type of players will also have participated in PvP since the reward structure there made effortless play even simpler, especially before the "no slacker rewards"-approach was tried.

I think you mean "unattended", and again I agree - it could have been monetized. But to do so, the monetizing would have needed to start at its peak, not now when it is in ruins. Also, a conception to monetize would have been needed. Current games monetizing PvP try the "cool" factor by selling the better looking skins and moves etc. as well as the pay-2-win factor with selling the "top" gear to noobs right from the start. And IIRC they tried RBs in PvP and they didn't work. And players cried havoc to get the base trinkets nerfed back again. So where to place the paywall without breaking it up totally, especially in a hybrid game?

IMO that breaks down to what I suggested before: instead of further seperating, link PvE and PvP more. PvP may get better participation numbers and the monetization can be placed on the PvE end, where the PvP portion of gamers would also participate. And maybe someone can think of a PvP benefit originating from subscription that will not be viewed upon as pay-2-win by the population.

I don't really agree with your analogy of this game. Maybe in your opinion and experience, it's not a pvp game. The people and players I know, this is or was, totally thr opposite. Most of us were pvpers. We did pve, which at one time helped in pvp.

Sorry, but if you are saying currently the community or game is not a pvp game, you are correct. The stats revamp and axing the ps3 players suseccfully helped end the pvp community. PC players moved on to other games that give a **** about their game, this is true.

Saying this isnt a pvp game though, is just wrong. Its frickin good vs evil, lol.

I politefully disagree with you. This is a PvE game that has PvP in it.
here's the tldr: a pile of numbers suggests that DCUO is PvE more than PvP

Okay, and here's the numbers the above tldr mentioned.... The numbers of things that are PvE in this game. Let's start with the simplest one: The On Duty Tab. we all know it, you want to run something, you make a group for it, or pug it. The On Duty Tab has both PvE stuff and PvP stuff. I looked at the available 'duties' on that menu. Here's what I found:
Events has 8 items. 7 that are solely PvE, one that is both PvE and PvP (Legends practice)
1 Player has 25 items. All of which are PvE.
2 Player has 38 items. All of which are PvE.
4 Player is a doozy. It has 50 items, all PvE.
8 Player is worse. 71 items of PvE (44 if you do not count the doubles of low raids / or the doubles that are elites)
so... PvE had 191 items in the On Duty Tab. (164 excluding elites/ doubles) +1 to both of those numbers for the Legends practice event.

Keep a note of that number (191)

Now we'll look at the PvP part of the On Duty Tab...
Events has 1 item... the Legends Practise.
1v1 has 3 items
2v2 has 4 items
4v4 has 8 items
5v5 has 4 items
8v8 has 4 items
the Legends PvP has pretty much the exact same
1v1 has 3 items,
2v2 has 4
4v4 has 8
5v5 has 4 and...
8v8 has 4
Totally 23 Legends PvP and 23 normal PvP for a grand total of 46. +1 for the Legends practice event.

So... I must less than humbly wonder... is 191 greater than 46? By my basic math, it's over quadruple the amount. Four times the amount of PvE vs PvP in the On Duty Tab. Which, in my opinion, makes the On Duty Tab part of the game a PvE game... with PvP thrown in as a bonus.

Now there is another aspect of the game that I didn't get numbers from, and this will be pure speculation on my part. Open World. I do not even know how to begin to count the number of PvE things (for example, all of the mentor missions and side quests to level 30, daily and weekly missions in all of the dlc's). That number is very large. Larger I bet, than Giganta's closet. (sorry, bad pun) Now looking at the PvP part of Open World.... Ring War, Diamond Heist, and the two 'pvp defeat 5 opponent bounty' missions So... four items. Much smaller than the Giganta's closet of Open World PvE

By all means, I truly believe that DCUO is a PvE game, with PvP being an added 'bonus'... my numbers above are why I believe.


p.s. I am aware of 'availability' of said content, but even at level 30, as a total free to play player, there is way more content available in PvE.




tldr ( too long, didn't read) : the numbers say DCUO is PvE (in my opinion)

Just to answer the comparison...Hearthstone is said to have made around 1.5 Billion dollars in 2018. I personally hope Ben Brode's (the original creative director for Hearthstone) game his company is designing generates a huge following as I plan on playing it. They announced they got a 30 million dollar deal with NetEase last week to build a new game that will use the Marvel License. On Brode's website they are currently hiring programmers that can code in the same language Hearthstone was coded in so it sounds like a digital card game based on Marvel will probably hit Beta sometime later this year. Super pumped for it.

Okay, sorry for the random talk. Back to dead DCUO PVP discussing you all go .

People drop tons of cash on the card games like Hearthstone. I was playing those games before Hearthstone was being developed. These kids screaming pay to win here have no idea what pay to win is until they step into one of those card games.

Word of WARNING...unless you plan on spending thousands trying to keep up with the JONES on the marvel game being developed. Don't even go there. Those card games like Hearthstone are 100% PAY TO WIN. Been there, done that & I will never do that again. And, my wallet thanks me. I spent thousands and could not keep up with the JONES. The guys that win at those games are doctors, lawyers, investment brokers and small business owners that want to get in buy something,.... win and get out. I still have quite a few friends that play & do well on those games.