Remember guys this is just my perspective on what happened from the position of being a content creator who was involved in testing and collecting data for this game's development. Many people have different experiences with this title and even the developers so this video is just me telling you my final thoughts on a lot of things that they had to say in their final video.
Neither of them are people who seam to have anything interesting to offer. The game felt like a shell trying to vaguely imply associations to other things. The fundamental problem was there wasn't any reason that this game even needed to be a MMO.
the game dies because they first gave up on the open world mmo, from then on they never completed a single thing. nothing ever got finished or polished. loser devs who milked the shit out of us.
So I was an OG Zenith player, From day 1. I could deal with the slow release of content, I could deal with the bugs and glitches. The bugs and glitches for me made things interesting and fun. laughing was a huge part of the fun. I could deal with the rebuild of the combat system and talent tree. I could even deal with the fact that they had spots that were unused and empty areas. That was nothing at all for me to deal with. What killed this game for me and I don't care who agrees with me or not. I don't care what anyone says. Devs if you're reading this.....the flying mechanic that was exploited called fast flying was removed. I never played the game again after that. It wasn't even about the speed. It was the ability to open up a new level of exploration not possible once it was patched. You can complain and gripe about how it was patched because it was an unintended exploit. I don't care it was fun and made conversations and I taught so many people how to do it. There was so much potential that was removed in that 1 patch. Killed the game for me entirely. I dont see what it accomplished for the devs because it was removed because they didn't want to have us fly over the content they created. But again people were playing. People were enjoying the game. As they said it was the best selling on steam and oculus store. People were playing and still doing the content. They just didn't listen....and that's all you'll hear from me.
I know I am a little late to the pary, just wanted to play Zenith for the first time in a while to find this. I stopped playing around the same time, tried to fast fly and it just did not work anymore. I miss grinding other classes up at the glitched infinite spawning event in the sand area.
The game can still be saved if Ramen would allow the people who have the right experience to take over the game. Ramen give them a year to turn things round without your interference.
I agree, I think Zenith could definitely be saved at the right content was added and managed but it seems that the team doesn't want to move forward with that kind of action. They seem to kind of want to move on from the Zenith project to make newer stuff but honestly if they don't get this process down then the new stuff is going to suck just as bad. That being said I really hoped for a long time that they would address the right features and experiences for the players to keep this game alive But ultimately at many turns the devs seemed to make the wrong decisions when it came to development
Zenith devs did EVERYTHING wrong... They released unfinished content... They had no endgame... They lied multiple times... They had terrible class design... There was only TWO classes... The combat was terrible... The boss fights were terrible... The gliding mechanics were terrible... Not having a healer class was terrible... They took way too long for everything... Along with plenty of other things... The ONLY thing they did right was: Game exploration was amazing while finding tears... Proximity voice chat opened opportunities for friendships... This game was never going to be an MMO... It was fun the first time, but it was doomed to fail because the devs are clueless... The devs failed, not the game...
These are a lot of valid points that many of the players were bringing up over time that I feel like a lot more of the casual players kept bringing up I think that Ramen just did not pay attention to these voices simply because they weren't playing their game constantly however that being said in the early days of the game I was very forgiving of a lot of its flaws in hopes of what it could be
Honestly the Cyber Ninja was the most fun class they had and they waited so long to release it that it was basically a giant tease. A few months later F2P was announced and I decided to never play the game again.
Zenith failed because they had no monetization. MMOs need constant content updates to keep people coming back and that has a big ongoing cost. Probably 6 months in, sales were over but they somehow needed to keep content coming. It’s just an economic impossibility. I really loved zenith in the early days, I enjoyed it for a while after the instanced content came out, but once I was burned out running the same three raids every day at 0000 UTC there was nothing left to do and nothing to look forward to. I doubt we’ll get a real vrmmo in the next decade because the only thing zenith did was show the big players in the industry that they were right to not invest in developing and publishing a vrmmo.
@@porcupine9997 I agree with a lot of the points made in this comment they definitely mismanaged their monetization system very poorly however I do still have hope for MMOs on virtual reality consoles in the future because I can't judge every development team based off of an entirely different ones mistakes. But I do recognize that Zenith put a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths and it's going to make it a little harder to convince audiences that an MMO can be good in virtual reality in this time
One of the things I think Ramen did wrong was that the new features did not feel coherent. When they ran tests, the tests were very short and then they released the new code so fast that they didn't have any time to fix the issues reported during the tests. I saw quite an improvement after they hired some developers that had MMO development experience, but the bugs kept piling up with no apparent effort towards fixing them. The development switch to focusing on Infinite Realms was pretty much the last straw that drove me away.
These are both really good points. I really wish we had more time in videos to talk about a lot of the small details like this but you're both on the money in my opinion
I think your spot on with all of your points. The guild system early on was absolutely horrendous though. When I founded LK we got so big so fast that I had to be online everyday day for hours, as I was the only person in the guild that was able to invite. That took a huge toll on me personally. Zenith was amazing, but the development team did not care about their concurrent player base or their concerns. Here's to the next virtual world that comes around 🤘😎. I hope to get back in touch with many of the beautiful individuals that I met along that epic journey in the first year of Zenith: The last city. Lord Krakenwolf
i just liked flying, i dont really care much about the whole ninja infinite realms stuff. they couldve added new places to fly and explore and i wouldve been happy
A couple things that always seemed wrong to me about the game: The only platform they flat out said the game was unfinished and still in development was Steam. If you bought it on Oculus (which my guess is where a majority of the players were because of it being an affordable headset), the game mentioned nothing about it being incomplete and still being developed. Also, when the Skyward Summit update came out, which was the first time I came back since launch week, and saw that the there was multiple static floating trees (not the resource ones) not touching the ground, I lost all faith in development of this game and just stopped playing. If something like that can be released without being noticed, there was obviously not enough QA happening if at all.
@@pland7114 it's not likely that they will unfortunately. They basically just said that they're going to run the game for a little while longer and then fully shut it down because it's costing too much money to keep alive. Honestly I think it's a crappy excuse.
@@pland7114 I also want to say that I have specifically been requesting at Dev meetings for well over a year when we were partaking in them but they need to make a version that can be played solo offline and a four-player version for the full game. It would have been a really good backup for situations like this where the massive amount of players aren't really interested so they don't need the big servers but then the dedicated players could keep playing through content while it's helping them bug test fix and create new experiences for the game. Overtime this may bring more players into the game and then they may need the big servers one day again. It's also possible that they would only need the big servers temporarily while they're dropping new content to handle the massive amount of players and then switch to running the four-player style servers whenever that content starts to slow down. I think we also suggested like 6 or 8 player servers as well.
They are just failures , well i guess they built the game for fun , raised money for it , got the money and worked on another beneficial project in parallel then they’re deopping the game . It’s like the stole money from selling dreams to people . As u said 32 billion $ dude some dudes make a whole game in 1 month with 5$ budget and it will look much more amazing.
@@mehdibensaada7475 while I do think their initial idea kind of failed due to their own poor management I don't think the idea of an MMO VR is a failure or even that they necessarily failed at getting one off the ground and running because a lot of people did enjoy it play it pay for it etcetera but I think what they did here was they had a great starting place and they kind of just ran it into the ground
Honestly I think they should have looked at elite dangerous and build a non vr integration in the same way. I think the only way a vr mmo will EVER do well is if people can also play non vr. For example I loved exploring in elite dangerous in vr but any sort of grind I always opted to play on pc while watching videos on a second monitor. I think like sub anime it just takes to much focus to stay locked in which is fine for most exploration parts but any sort of grind is going to get real boring real fast needing 100% of your attention. Like I cant even describe how daunting it was when I first tried elite and didn't know it had a pc port and I thought I would have to grind everything in vr. The tutorial took me 4 hours to get through in vr where when I did it after on pc it took me 20mins. All I could think was any form of grind will take at least 4x the time trying to do this in vr. When I realized you could do the painful grinding on pc fast and then go back to vr for the cool exploration parts it really saved that game for me. After this I don't think a vr only mmo will ever hold the same level of players just because its to much work to grind in vr. At the core of it I think this is the main issue. Its just to much work to play casually. Also elite is actually decent to play on pc so its not just it needs a pc port but it needs a playable one that people can play without ever thinking about vr. Its almost as if you need non vr players to fill up the world just so the vr players have people to play with. 10:39 that is fair they probably thought they was going to hit the main stream as a hit being the first game of its kind but they really should have doubled down on the niece audience. 11:53 Its a common problem with many live services that they cant keep up with production needed to keep people invested. Just looking at wow you need probably small seasonal content patches and a massive expansion ever 2 ish years to keep people invested. The only times wow ever extended its patches it always suffers in player numbers. Like look at hell divers, they have been getting the small patches so long now they needed to do something big to trying and make a come back. Its the same with any live service, people need constant content to keep the game out of a death spiral. Even destiny which brings out new content on the regular but because its so similar people get bored with a same ish feeling seasonal content drop and really the main reason destiny is still popping is because when it does expansion content it changes the game up a lot. You need lots of smaller content drops and a big one that shakes things up every 2 ish years seems to be what works for 5 to 10 years at least but even no that isn't carrying destiny or wow anymore but I do think it is a good place to start for any mmo live service. 13:06 Honestly I think this comes back to my initial point. The game was to much work to play casually without a pc port. Think about all the new mmos that have a phone port so you can play on pc and grind on a phone. Its the same idea here people just want an easy time for the grinding content. 15:09 I don't think an mmo can ever stand on cosmetic only sales. There is a massive amount of players that only care for earned cosmetics and if you offer then nothing to buy then you make nothing off them. For example I played division2 half a year and wondered how they even funded new content because there was nothing for me to buy other then conmetics I don't care about where fallout76 when in the first week I put 10$ more into the shop for perma progression items that provide me a better time playing. Character slots, loadout slots, home slots perma account upgrades usually is what gets me to buy. I personally don't like actual buy power p2w games but I do think buy for convience items are the only thing you can offer people who only care for achievement cosmetics. Even destiny I played a decade and never bought anything but expansions and season passes for story content. Season pass that isn't tied to story like division2 I dont even think about. 1 more thing when there is a recession cosmetic sales are the first to go, and I think because destiny leaned so heavy on them during covid is why they likely lose the company to sony now. TLDR: you cant ride on selling cosmetics alone and pretty much every mmo game tried this just struggles to pay the bills let alone for new content. 17:45 You know I actually never even seen someone else make a zenith video and this had been my go to place to keep updated on the game so I dont' even know what creators they paid.. 18:29 This should be the expectation for any mmo now tbh. There is to many good games to just play 1 game all the time. Destiny for example front loads it season content to the first few weeks of the season and then it lets people take a break if they want. Like you should lean into player surging by just making sure you have those small consistent updates and to surge new players really only an expansion that resets progress will do this. No one is picking up destiny half way through an expansion when 2 of 4 seasons are done they are picking it up at the start when everyone is on a level ish playing field again. If never have an expansion then you always struggle with new player injection but again I think every NEW MMO DEVELOPER should not fight against the play a month and take a break mentality. Even wow started dieing for many reasons but I think this was largely one of the main ones because more recently they have been letting players finish the content so they can try other games and it has been bring people back I think. Its like you cant try to be the only mmo on the market or you will 100% fail at the point of saturation we are in. 21:20 True they probably released to early. They should have had the 3rd character and like the first 5 updates made and waiting to push out. I think this is an issue with so many games, they just want to put it out there and then make the new content after but what if you cant make it fast enough and everyone leave. Like there should be a content release strategy with some content in the bank ready to go. 28:41 I mean ya classic era wow is still going strong not to mention all the private server games out there but not many lol. Should drop a link to your other channel in a pinned comment or something!
@@ModeKaioken I actually really like this opinion, a while back I suggested to them to make a solo or four-player only mode where you could play by yourself or with a smaller group of friends but not on a massive server. Ascent Quest is a vrmmo coming out that offers a similar kind of experience
You bring up a lot of valid points in this comment and I would love to address them all but I will stick with just one as it is a long comment. And that would be the MMOs being able to stand if they sell cosmetics. I do agree that selling Cosmetics only is not a good model and wish I had more time in the video in order to go into detail on what I think a good Cosmetics model would be but I think games like dauntless almost have it right where you're able to buy cosmetics and other things to help you here and there but for the most you cannot pay to win the whole game but they just make each character so customizable that you are tempted to at least spend 10-15 bucks here or there every few months in the game in order to update your character. I also think it would have been a great idea to just drop new characters every once in a while in order to get players back in. There's a lot to dig into here and maybe I will be able to in a future video. Thanks so much for watching all the way to the end 🤘😎
@ShiYuMeng2you know what's funny is that some point they promised us that this would be cross-play and I think that really would have helped keep people in the game as a lot of people just don't have access to VR but we're very interested in communicating with people who are npr. A flat screen and VR mode would be perfect
Bad decisions bring bad ends. Making new content is awesome, and needed for MMOs to exist. But killing existing content to make it possible feels like, ugh. Yes I'm talking about completely removing the main story from the main lands when creating the "new beginning" in the new island. That made me so pissed off.
@@subtlety1069 there are a few currently in development that we've covered on the channel. Ascent quest in my opinion looks the most promising and runner-up would be Ilysia but I've seen a lot of comments of people telling me about others that are out there. Hopefully when they start dropping more info I can cover it for you guys
I feel like yeah people leaving…it’s hard to grind for hours with a vr headset maybe if they had a small system to play desktop mode or in console people would keep grinding.
Did Ramen run into trouble with Nintendo? I noticed every new update to the game was almost a carbon copy of what Nintendo had released in a Zelda game.
Zenith is the reason i subscribed to you, then figured out Ilisya exists and Orbus and so on, but anyway, it's very sad hearing you talk about its "death" About Zenith. I still think is not dead, the key is to sell it so someone that cares, It could be blizzard, they already have the biggest MMO the world have seen so i could say they know a thing or two about running a game, or if is not a company, maybe a player, someone that actually played MMO games and actually knows what keeps them hooked to the game they are playing. If not, just give it to someone that can listen, that's the only requirement, to not be so arrogant and think you know it all, just listen, the reason for EVERYTHING that happened to this game is because ramen VR didn't listen to their players... You can say anything about it, I've herd it all, Zenith is rotten to its core, full of bugs, doesn't work, whatever, guess what, *I still had fun playing that game* , that means it can be revived, it just have to me someone that cares, as you said in the video, you did so much work for them for free, that's passion and not just "money grab" that ramen VR does, this game, or any game/project needs that passion and just someone that believe in it. They've seen that the game was empty for a year how you said in the video and they thought it was dead and tried only the wrong solutions because they know better then the hundreds of players screaming the same thing to them. If the players don't come back, make them come back, with engaging activities. I've said it since day one, this game needed fishing, they never considered it, they never added alchemy, potion crafting, tinkering, jewelcrafting, archeology... idk, something to make the player want to come back and collect those few 100 item they need to advance in their profession or whatever side skill they had. sure they had cooking, with which you could cook items, that had nearly no impact in your gameplay or pets, that... again, had negligible impact in the actual gameplay... in case you haven't figured out, my main inspiration is WoW, where players get all these side skills that keeps them hooked, and if is not a skill like, leatherworking, alchemy, enginery or whatever, is just collectibles. So many players enter wow just to dress up their character, they do dungeons that are up once a week for a 0,01 chance to get those pants they are missing for their full outfit of their character. To summarize, yeah, Zenith is not dead, even if is dead and has 0 players, it can be revived by someone with passion for what they're doing not someone that just want the money. I know you worked on this game from what you said in the video or at least have the contact of someone at ramen VR, so you could get in touch with them and just tell them that idea, maybe they didn't consider this but they should sell the game to someone that cares, and for them is what they always wanted, more money so it's a win for everyone.
I agree with some of the points you make here but the thing is unless Ramen VR sells the title of the game to someone else and they can brush off all of the bad publicity it probably is dead in the ground for good. Saying that someone could just up and buy it and revive it sounds a bit like coping to me. If there was a high likelihood that someone wanted to do that then it would not but the thing is nobody wants it anymore which really sucks because I did enjoy the experience in loved covering this game for you guys. Unfortunately I think we all have to face the fact that this game is probably done for unless a miracle happens because even the devs have said they're only going to run it for a few months shut it down and then move on. It would take a lot of interest in the game for another buyer to want to own the IP probably.
i 100% forgot about this game and wonted to play it only just this week i check the PS store and notice it was out didnt see this get pushed or talked about at all and i try to stay up to date on PSVR as for how they should have made there money yea they F up big time if your going to do a mmo free to play really anything co-op and your planning for updates and add ons free to play just look at warframe love or hate the game they have the free to play road map on lock side note that may get hate but if they were really hurting for money they could have asked playstation to buy them (there not really that much on PSVR that is good and stand out really dont think they say no) save the money to work on other things game gets added to playstation+ so player numbers gose up playstation gets the cash from the other vr headset when ppl buy new looks or items for there charter
This is also not true. The game felt dead in so many other different ways, making it almost impossible for many other players to play or even try to like it. NPC's felt so dead and robotic, the combat system was awful, among with the mechanics etc etc... Flying was fun tho.
@@elimiller2485 yeah so I actually played orbis for a very long time and while I do admit it was the first vrmmo it wasn't the first vrmmo like experience that everyone was trying to get. It was very close but I think being a floating body really killed it for me they were also a lot of other PC VR MMOs that I just didn't cover. And just to be very clear I was just specifically saying they first vrmmo experience that most people were familiar with. That being said I probably could have worded it a bit better in this video to be clear about the point I was trying to make
Zenith died because it just wasn't a very good game and it was a worse MMO. No synergy between abilities within your class, zero synergy between abilities of party members, awful dungeons people just sped through skipping all the mobs, no real meaningful endgame, gear that didn't feel like it made any real difference, and on and on and on. It just wasn't good, it wasn't unique, it wasn't really anything. Infinite Realms was a joke at best... Meh..
@@Thezuule1 while I do understand that not a lot of players like their combat system or even their character selection you have to admit that a lot of people played this game and enjoyed it so it's possible that the game had a future if they would have developed on the right things and manage their game a bit better. I don't think it was ever meant to be a great MMO such as being a great VR MMO game as we did not have many on the platform that could even compare to the crappie side of zenith unfortunately. That being said they could have worked a lot on the core game mechanics combat and cosmetics for the game and this really would have helped. To quote a great game maker you have to focus on making combat one of the most addictive parts of your game since its Revisited so much. A lot of people felt it was too grind heavy and repetitive over time and while this is definitely true I think if they had released more fighting styles in the game this could have been rounded out a bit easier.
@@RedDevilVR it being grind heavy and repetitive would have been okay if there was some synergy. I could hit my abilities in any order, on any mob, and it didn't make any difference. There was no setup ability to lock someone down while I tossed a DOT or two and then interrupted their attack or anything of that nature. No way to CC extra adds that had been pulled. At least not on the mage that I played anyway. You just hit a bunch of buttons and teleported away when something got close, if you even bothered to. It wasn't engaging and required no strategy or thought. You just facerolled across the buttons and stuff died. You upgraded your equipment and it was just more of the same. Never felt like the upgrades did anything, never had a proc effect that was triggered by a weapon or anything of the sort, there was no hit rating or spell penetration to maximize or anything. This is the absolute most basic stuff when it comes to combat in MMOs and they flubbed it right out of the gate. Then the amount of time it took for them to push out a third class or any kind of meaningful updates had already seen the population dwindle down to almost nothing compared to launch. It was just a mess. I feel bad as this isn't the experience I wanted and I paid $30 for something hoping it would improve and it never did.
@@MikeReed-r8r Actually no I didn't. At the end of the video and even in the comments on the viewing of their video we respond to the fact that Zenith will still be here for a temporary amount of time please watch the whole video before making a comment like this.
@@MikeReed-r8r I think I misunderstood what you were saying so first let me apologize for that. I Jumped the gun thinking you were talking about this video we are referencing in this video LOL but if you're talking about the video where they made a few months back where he got all mad and the Q&A I know exactly what you're talking about LOL
Zenith was an extremely toxic game. To many weird relationships with older people and younger people. Fake reports inappropriate relationships with dev. Drunk people in zenith. Discussion about drugs drinking sex. I left because I didn't feel comfortable.
Remember guys this is just my perspective on what happened from the position of being a content creator who was involved in testing and collecting data for this game's development. Many people have different experiences with this title and even the developers so this video is just me telling you my final thoughts on a lot of things that they had to say in their final video.
Neither of them are people who seam to have anything interesting to offer. The game felt like a shell trying to vaguely imply associations to other things. The fundamental problem was there wasn't any reason that this game even needed to be a MMO.
We knew that video they released was a big lie , when they had comments turned off due to them knowing the tidal wave of fans coming for their heads
@@csreaper73 I know a man as soon as I saw that comments were turned off I immediately thought it was suspicious LOL
the game dies because they first gave up on the open world mmo, from then on they never completed a single thing. nothing ever got finished or polished. loser devs who milked the shit out of us.
Comments turned off is never a good sign
So I was an OG Zenith player, From day 1. I could deal with the slow release of content, I could deal with the bugs and glitches. The bugs and glitches for me made things interesting and fun. laughing was a huge part of the fun. I could deal with the rebuild of the combat system and talent tree. I could even deal with the fact that they had spots that were unused and empty areas. That was nothing at all for me to deal with. What killed this game for me and I don't care who agrees with me or not. I don't care what anyone says. Devs if you're reading this.....the flying mechanic that was exploited called fast flying was removed. I never played the game again after that. It wasn't even about the speed. It was the ability to open up a new level of exploration not possible once it was patched. You can complain and gripe about how it was patched because it was an unintended exploit. I don't care it was fun and made conversations and I taught so many people how to do it. There was so much potential that was removed in that 1 patch. Killed the game for me entirely. I dont see what it accomplished for the devs because it was removed because they didn't want to have us fly over the content they created. But again people were playing. People were enjoying the game. As they said it was the best selling on steam and oculus store. People were playing and still doing the content. They just didn't listen....and that's all you'll hear from me.
Well written.
I know I am a little late to the pary, just wanted to play Zenith for the first time in a while to find this. I stopped playing around the same time, tried to fast fly and it just did not work anymore. I miss grinding other classes up at the glitched infinite spawning event in the sand area.
@NoArkf the fast glide is back. Definitely working
The game can still be saved if Ramen would allow the people who have the right experience to take over the game. Ramen give them a year to turn things round without your interference.
I agree, I think Zenith could definitely be saved at the right content was added and managed but it seems that the team doesn't want to move forward with that kind of action. They seem to kind of want to move on from the Zenith project to make newer stuff but honestly if they don't get this process down then the new stuff is going to suck just as bad. That being said I really hoped for a long time that they would address the right features and experiences for the players to keep this game alive But ultimately at many turns the devs seemed to make the wrong decisions when it came to development
@@RedDevilVR or at least polish the damn map so you don't just fall through.
Zenith devs did EVERYTHING wrong...
They released unfinished content...
They had no endgame...
They lied multiple times...
They had terrible class design...
There was only TWO classes...
The combat was terrible...
The boss fights were terrible...
The gliding mechanics were terrible...
Not having a healer class was terrible...
They took way too long for everything...
Along with plenty of other things...
The ONLY thing they did right was:
Game exploration was amazing while finding tears...
Proximity voice chat opened opportunities for friendships...
This game was never going to be an MMO...
It was fun the first time, but it was doomed to fail because the devs are clueless...
The devs failed, not the game...
These are a lot of valid points that many of the players were bringing up over time that I feel like a lot more of the casual players kept bringing up I think that Ramen just did not pay attention to these voices simply because they weren't playing their game constantly however that being said in the early days of the game I was very forgiving of a lot of its flaws in hopes of what it could be
Honestly the Cyber Ninja was the most fun class they had and they waited so long to release it that it was basically a giant tease. A few months later F2P was announced and I decided to never play the game again.
Zenith failed because they had no monetization. MMOs need constant content updates to keep people coming back and that has a big ongoing cost. Probably 6 months in, sales were over but they somehow needed to keep content coming. It’s just an economic impossibility. I really loved zenith in the early days, I enjoyed it for a while after the instanced content came out, but once I was burned out running the same three raids every day at 0000 UTC there was nothing left to do and nothing to look forward to. I doubt we’ll get a real vrmmo in the next decade because the only thing zenith did was show the big players in the industry that they were right to not invest in developing and publishing a vrmmo.
@@porcupine9997 I agree with a lot of the points made in this comment they definitely mismanaged their monetization system very poorly however I do still have hope for MMOs on virtual reality consoles in the future because I can't judge every development team based off of an entirely different ones mistakes. But I do recognize that Zenith put a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths and it's going to make it a little harder to convince audiences that an MMO can be good in virtual reality in this time
One of the things I think Ramen did wrong was that the new features did not feel coherent. When they ran tests, the tests were very short and then they released the new code so fast that they didn't have any time to fix the issues reported during the tests. I saw quite an improvement after they hired some developers that had MMO development experience, but the bugs kept piling up with no apparent effort towards fixing them. The development switch to focusing on Infinite Realms was pretty much the last straw that drove me away.
Onestly the worst problem of zenith was that the grind felt the same for every armour and weapon it just was t interesting anymore
These are both really good points. I really wish we had more time in videos to talk about a lot of the small details like this but you're both on the money in my opinion
@@jackspartoul5346yep, it was like grind one armour set you’ve grinded them all… some unique quests to level different gear would have been nice
I think your spot on with all of your points.
The guild system early on was absolutely horrendous though. When I founded LK we got so big so fast that I had to be online everyday day for hours, as I was the only person in the guild that was able to invite. That took a huge toll on me personally.
Zenith was amazing, but the development team did not care about their concurrent player base or their concerns.
Here's to the next virtual world that comes around 🤘😎. I hope to get back in touch with many of the beautiful individuals that I met along that epic journey in the first year of Zenith: The last city.
Lord Krakenwolf
i just liked flying, i dont really care much about the whole ninja infinite realms stuff. they couldve added new places to fly and explore and i wouldve been happy
A couple things that always seemed wrong to me about the game:
The only platform they flat out said the game was unfinished and still in development was Steam. If you bought it on Oculus (which my guess is where a majority of the players were because of it being an affordable headset), the game mentioned nothing about it being incomplete and still being developed.
Also, when the Skyward Summit update came out, which was the first time I came back since launch week, and saw that the there was multiple static floating trees (not the resource ones) not touching the ground, I lost all faith in development of this game and just stopped playing. If something like that can be released without being noticed, there was obviously not enough QA happening if at all.
I really hope this game gets the treatment of other mmo games by getting a private version of it for the dedicated fans
@@pland7114 it's not likely that they will unfortunately. They basically just said that they're going to run the game for a little while longer and then fully shut it down because it's costing too much money to keep alive. Honestly I think it's a crappy excuse.
@@pland7114 I also want to say that I have specifically been requesting at Dev meetings for well over a year when we were partaking in them but they need to make a version that can be played solo offline and a four-player version for the full game. It would have been a really good backup for situations like this where the massive amount of players aren't really interested so they don't need the big servers but then the dedicated players could keep playing through content while it's helping them bug test fix and create new experiences for the game. Overtime this may bring more players into the game and then they may need the big servers one day again. It's also possible that they would only need the big servers temporarily while they're dropping new content to handle the massive amount of players and then switch to running the four-player style servers whenever that content starts to slow down. I think we also suggested like 6 or 8 player servers as well.
Sad, but I suppose I’m not that broken up about it, considering how I stopped playing months ago.
Hope future vr devs will learn from this mess.
They are just failures , well i guess they built the game for fun , raised money for it , got the money and worked on another beneficial project in parallel then they’re deopping the game . It’s like the stole money from selling dreams to people . As u said 32 billion $ dude some dudes make a whole game in 1 month with 5$ budget and it will look much more amazing.
@@mehdibensaada7475 while I do think their initial idea kind of failed due to their own poor management I don't think the idea of an MMO VR is a failure or even that they necessarily failed at getting one off the ground and running because a lot of people did enjoy it play it pay for it etcetera but I think what they did here was they had a great starting place and they kind of just ran it into the ground
Honestly I think they should have looked at elite dangerous and build a non vr integration in the same way.
I think the only way a vr mmo will EVER do well is if people can also play non vr. For example I loved exploring in elite dangerous in vr but any sort of grind I always opted to play on pc while watching videos on a second monitor. I think like sub anime it just takes to much focus to stay locked in which is fine for most exploration parts but any sort of grind is going to get real boring real fast needing 100% of your attention. Like I cant even describe how daunting it was when I first tried elite and didn't know it had a pc port and I thought I would have to grind everything in vr. The tutorial took me 4 hours to get through in vr where when I did it after on pc it took me 20mins. All I could think was any form of grind will take at least 4x the time trying to do this in vr. When I realized you could do the painful grinding on pc fast and then go back to vr for the cool exploration parts it really saved that game for me. After this I don't think a vr only mmo will ever hold the same level of players just because its to much work to grind in vr.
At the core of it I think this is the main issue. Its just to much work to play casually. Also elite is actually decent to play on pc so its not just it needs a pc port but it needs a playable one that people can play without ever thinking about vr. Its almost as if you need non vr players to fill up the world just so the vr players have people to play with.
10:39 that is fair they probably thought they was going to hit the main stream as a hit being the first game of its kind but they really should have doubled down on the niece audience.
11:53 Its a common problem with many live services that they cant keep up with production needed to keep people invested. Just looking at wow you need probably small seasonal content patches and a massive expansion ever 2 ish years to keep people invested. The only times wow ever extended its patches it always suffers in player numbers. Like look at hell divers, they have been getting the small patches so long now they needed to do something big to trying and make a come back. Its the same with any live service, people need constant content to keep the game out of a death spiral. Even destiny which brings out new content on the regular but because its so similar people get bored with a same ish feeling seasonal content drop and really the main reason destiny is still popping is because when it does expansion content it changes the game up a lot. You need lots of smaller content drops and a big one that shakes things up every 2 ish years seems to be what works for 5 to 10 years at least but even no that isn't carrying destiny or wow anymore but I do think it is a good place to start for any mmo live service.
13:06 Honestly I think this comes back to my initial point. The game was to much work to play casually without a pc port. Think about all the new mmos that have a phone port so you can play on pc and grind on a phone. Its the same idea here people just want an easy time for the grinding content.
15:09 I don't think an mmo can ever stand on cosmetic only sales. There is a massive amount of players that only care for earned cosmetics and if you offer then nothing to buy then you make nothing off them. For example I played division2 half a year and wondered how they even funded new content because there was nothing for me to buy other then conmetics I don't care about where fallout76 when in the first week I put 10$ more into the shop for perma progression items that provide me a better time playing. Character slots, loadout slots, home slots perma account upgrades usually is what gets me to buy. I personally don't like actual buy power p2w games but I do think buy for convience items are the only thing you can offer people who only care for achievement cosmetics. Even destiny I played a decade and never bought anything but expansions and season passes for story content. Season pass that isn't tied to story like division2 I dont even think about. 1 more thing when there is a recession cosmetic sales are the first to go, and I think because destiny leaned so heavy on them during covid is why they likely lose the company to sony now.
TLDR: you cant ride on selling cosmetics alone and pretty much every mmo game tried this just struggles to pay the bills let alone for new content.
17:45 You know I actually never even seen someone else make a zenith video and this had been my go to place to keep updated on the game so I dont' even know what creators they paid..
18:29 This should be the expectation for any mmo now tbh. There is to many good games to just play 1 game all the time. Destiny for example front loads it season content to the first few weeks of the season and then it lets people take a break if they want. Like you should lean into player surging by just making sure you have those small consistent updates and to surge new players really only an expansion that resets progress will do this. No one is picking up destiny half way through an expansion when 2 of 4 seasons are done they are picking it up at the start when everyone is on a level ish playing field again. If never have an expansion then you always struggle with new player injection but again I think every NEW MMO DEVELOPER should not fight against the play a month and take a break mentality. Even wow started dieing for many reasons but I think this was largely one of the main ones because more recently they have been letting players finish the content so they can try other games and it has been bring people back I think. Its like you cant try to be the only mmo on the market or you will 100% fail at the point of saturation we are in.
21:20 True they probably released to early. They should have had the 3rd character and like the first 5 updates made and waiting to push out. I think this is an issue with so many games, they just want to put it out there and then make the new content after but what if you cant make it fast enough and everyone leave. Like there should be a content release strategy with some content in the bank ready to go.
28:41 I mean ya classic era wow is still going strong not to mention all the private server games out there but not many lol.
Should drop a link to your other channel in a pinned comment or something!
@@ModeKaioken I actually really like this opinion, a while back I suggested to them to make a solo or four-player only mode where you could play by yourself or with a smaller group of friends but not on a massive server. Ascent Quest is a vrmmo coming out that offers a similar kind of experience
You bring up a lot of valid points in this comment and I would love to address them all but I will stick with just one as it is a long comment. And that would be the MMOs being able to stand if they sell cosmetics. I do agree that selling Cosmetics only is not a good model and wish I had more time in the video in order to go into detail on what I think a good Cosmetics model would be but I think games like dauntless almost have it right where you're able to buy cosmetics and other things to help you here and there but for the most you cannot pay to win the whole game but they just make each character so customizable that you are tempted to at least spend 10-15 bucks here or there every few months in the game in order to update your character. I also think it would have been a great idea to just drop new characters every once in a while in order to get players back in. There's a lot to dig into here and maybe I will be able to in a future video. Thanks so much for watching all the way to the end
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@ShiYuMeng2you know what's funny is that some point they promised us that this would be cross-play and I think that really would have helped keep people in the game as a lot of people just don't have access to VR but we're very interested in communicating with people who are npr. A flat screen and VR mode would be perfect
Bad decisions bring bad ends.
Making new content is awesome, and needed for MMOs to exist.
But killing existing content to make it possible feels like, ugh.
Yes I'm talking about completely removing the main story from the main lands when creating the "new beginning" in the new island. That made me so pissed off.
What is the best VRMMO out? Are there any in development atm?
@@subtlety1069 there are a few currently in development that we've covered on the channel. Ascent quest in my opinion looks the most promising and runner-up would be Ilysia but I've seen a lot of comments of people telling me about others that are out there. Hopefully when they start dropping more info I can cover it for you guys
If you want a similar game on quest 2 and 3 you can try a township tale and if you have pc there are also a lot of good vr mmo games
@@pland7114 att is definitely one of the best social games you can play on any Quest system in my opinion
really feels like they ignored their fanbase. Such a shame. And i agree with you, i also didnt like how it was so centered around discord
your content only gets better, being almost unrecognizable from your earlier stuff. keep going!
I feel like yeah people leaving…it’s hard to grind for hours with a vr headset maybe if they had a small system to play desktop mode or in console people would keep grinding.
this was a Great Vr Mmo so sad
Did Ramen run into trouble with Nintendo? I noticed every new update to the game was almost a carbon copy of what Nintendo had released in a Zelda game.
Zenith is the reason i subscribed to you, then figured out Ilisya exists and Orbus and so on, but anyway, it's very sad hearing you talk about its "death"
About Zenith.
I still think is not dead, the key is to sell it so someone that cares, It could be blizzard, they already have the biggest MMO the world have seen so i could say they know a thing or two about running a game, or if is not a company, maybe a player, someone that actually played MMO games and actually knows what keeps them hooked to the game they are playing.
If not, just give it to someone that can listen, that's the only requirement, to not be so arrogant and think you know it all, just listen, the reason for EVERYTHING that happened to this game is because ramen VR didn't listen to their players...
You can say anything about it, I've herd it all, Zenith is rotten to its core, full of bugs, doesn't work, whatever, guess what, *I still had fun playing that game* , that means it can be revived, it just have to me someone that cares, as you said in the video, you did so much work for them for free, that's passion and not just "money grab" that ramen VR does, this game, or any game/project needs that passion and just someone that believe in it.
They've seen that the game was empty for a year how you said in the video and they thought it was dead and tried only the wrong solutions because they know better then the hundreds of players screaming the same thing to them. If the players don't come back, make them come back, with engaging activities.
I've said it since day one, this game needed fishing, they never considered it, they never added alchemy, potion crafting, tinkering, jewelcrafting, archeology... idk, something to make the player want to come back and collect those few 100 item they need to advance in their profession or whatever side skill they had.
sure they had cooking, with which you could cook items, that had nearly no impact in your gameplay
or pets, that... again, had negligible impact in the actual gameplay...
in case you haven't figured out, my main inspiration is WoW, where players get all these side skills that keeps them hooked, and if is not a skill like, leatherworking, alchemy, enginery or whatever, is just collectibles. So many players enter wow just to dress up their character, they do dungeons that are up once a week for a 0,01 chance to get those pants they are missing for their full outfit of their character.
To summarize, yeah, Zenith is not dead, even if is dead and has 0 players, it can be revived by someone with passion for what they're doing not someone that just want the money.
I know you worked on this game from what you said in the video or at least have the contact of someone at ramen VR, so you could get in touch with them and just tell them that idea, maybe they didn't consider this but they should sell the game to someone that cares, and for them is what they always wanted, more money so it's a win for everyone.
I agree with some of the points you make here but the thing is unless Ramen VR sells the title of the game to someone else and they can brush off all of the bad publicity it probably is dead in the ground for good. Saying that someone could just up and buy it and revive it sounds a bit like coping to me. If there was a high likelihood that someone wanted to do that then it would not but the thing is nobody wants it anymore which really sucks because I did enjoy the experience in loved covering this game for you guys. Unfortunately I think we all have to face the fact that this game is probably done for unless a miracle happens because even the devs have said they're only going to run it for a few months shut it down and then move on. It would take a lot of interest in the game for another buyer to want to own the IP probably.
Zenith is dead no way
i 100% forgot about this game and wonted to play it only just this week i check the PS store and notice it was out didnt see this get pushed or talked about at all and i try to stay up to date on PSVR as for how they should have made there money yea they F up big time if your going to do a mmo free to play really anything co-op and your planning for updates and add ons free to play just look at warframe love or hate the game they have the free to play road map on lock
side note that may get hate but if they were really hurting for money they could have asked playstation to buy them (there not really that much on PSVR that is good and stand out really dont think they say no) save the money to work on other things game gets added to playstation+ so player numbers gose up playstation gets the cash from the other vr headset when ppl buy new looks or items for there charter
This is also not true. The game felt dead in so many other different ways, making it almost impossible for many other players to play or even try to like it. NPC's felt so dead and robotic, the combat system was awful, among with the mechanics etc etc... Flying was fun tho.
I like your new look better.
You got one big thing wrong they weren't the first they were more the second the first was orbus VR reborn
@@elimiller2485 yeah so I actually played orbis for a very long time and while I do admit it was the first vrmmo it wasn't the first vrmmo like experience that everyone was trying to get. It was very close but I think being a floating body really killed it for me they were also a lot of other PC VR MMOs that I just didn't cover. And just to be very clear I was just specifically saying they first vrmmo experience that most people were familiar with. That being said I probably could have worded it a bit better in this video to be clear about the point I was trying to make
I agree. orbus was the first, but people don't like to give it the credit it deserves since the switch from preborn to reborn.
VR is basically a mobile device you strap on your head and magically expect more from...
There are actual mobile mmos right now lol
Zenith died because it just wasn't a very good game and it was a worse MMO. No synergy between abilities within your class, zero synergy between abilities of party members, awful dungeons people just sped through skipping all the mobs, no real meaningful endgame, gear that didn't feel like it made any real difference, and on and on and on. It just wasn't good, it wasn't unique, it wasn't really anything. Infinite Realms was a joke at best... Meh..
@@Thezuule1 while I do understand that not a lot of players like their combat system or even their character selection you have to admit that a lot of people played this game and enjoyed it so it's possible that the game had a future if they would have developed on the right things and manage their game a bit better. I don't think it was ever meant to be a great MMO such as being a great VR MMO game as we did not have many on the platform that could even compare to the crappie side of zenith unfortunately. That being said they could have worked a lot on the core game mechanics combat and cosmetics for the game and this really would have helped. To quote a great game maker you have to focus on making combat one of the most addictive parts of your game since its Revisited so much. A lot of people felt it was too grind heavy and repetitive over time and while this is definitely true I think if they had released more fighting styles in the game this could have been rounded out a bit easier.
@@RedDevilVR it being grind heavy and repetitive would have been okay if there was some synergy. I could hit my abilities in any order, on any mob, and it didn't make any difference. There was no setup ability to lock someone down while I tossed a DOT or two and then interrupted their attack or anything of that nature. No way to CC extra adds that had been pulled. At least not on the mage that I played anyway. You just hit a bunch of buttons and teleported away when something got close, if you even bothered to. It wasn't engaging and required no strategy or thought. You just facerolled across the buttons and stuff died. You upgraded your equipment and it was just more of the same. Never felt like the upgrades did anything, never had a proc effect that was triggered by a weapon or anything of the sort, there was no hit rating or spell penetration to maximize or anything. This is the absolute most basic stuff when it comes to combat in MMOs and they flubbed it right out of the gate. Then the amount of time it took for them to push out a third class or any kind of meaningful updates had already seen the population dwindle down to almost nothing compared to launch. It was just a mess. I feel bad as this isn't the experience I wanted and I paid $30 for something hoping it would improve and it never did.
im so happy the game is dead, played for 30 minutes and decided it was shit. good riddance
You left out the best part of that video relax zenith will still fucking be here lol
@@MikeReed-r8r Actually no I didn't. At the end of the video and even in the comments on the viewing of their video we respond to the fact that Zenith will still be here for a temporary amount of time please watch the whole video before making a comment like this.
@@RedDevilVR nah that wasnt the video where andy was geting mad and till everyone to fn relax and zenith will still be here lol
@@MikeReed-r8r I think I misunderstood what you were saying so first let me apologize for that. I Jumped the gun thinking you were talking about this video we are referencing in this video LOL but if you're talking about the video where they made a few months back where he got all mad and the Q&A I know exactly what you're talking about LOL
Zenith was an extremely toxic game. To many weird relationships with older people and younger people. Fake reports inappropriate relationships with dev. Drunk people in zenith. Discussion about drugs drinking sex. I left because I didn't feel comfortable.