Dispelling the Myth That Cave Adds Content Constantly
AKA. Why SMT Online: Imagine is Failing – The Sequel.
There’s this statement going around that “Cave adds a lot of content every 2-3 months” and that the patch on the 18th of December magically solves a lot of the content issues in Imagine.
Shall we look at the entire of Imagine’s update history?
Note: I’m including close/open beta stuff in this list. Imagine official went out of beta on the 4th of April, 2007.
Update History of SMT Online: Imagine
18th of January 2007 – Cell Tower Bronze added
14th of February 2007 – Suginami Bronze and Ichigaya Bronze added.
26th of February 2007 – Klan system added. Act 1 and 2 added.
4th of February 2007 – Suginami Silver and Ichigaya Silver added. Act 3 and 4 added.
7th of June 2007 – Act 5-7 added
21st of June 2007 – Bazaar System added
28th of June 2007 – Shibuya Quartz added
9th of August 2007 – Arcadia, Souhonzan, Shinagawa and Ueno added. Act 8-10 added.
24th of August 2007 – Akuma Zensho Added
13th of September 2007 – Hair Syling System added
27th of September 2007 – Suginami, 3rd Home and Shinjuku Babel Comp Hack added,
25th of October 2007 – Enchant, friendship system, chain expert and G1 trial added. Act 11-12 added.
29th of November 2007 – Suginami Gold added
20th of December 2007 – Tri-Union added. Klan system expanded. Act 13 added.
24th of January 2008 – Shinawaga Catacombs added. Riding system added.
21st of February 2008 – Plasma System added. User interface changed.
6th of March 2008 – Additional Channels added to Cerberus world.
19th of March 2008 – Ichigaya Comp Hack Added, Act 14 added.
4th of April 2008 – New world, Cu Chulainn added.
22th of April 2008 – Act 0 added. Crafting/recycling/modification system added.
22th of May 2008 – Suzaku Caravans Added.
2rd of July 2008 – Act 15 added.
7th of August 2008 – Protopia Added. Act 16 added.
21st of August 2008 – Devil fusion attacks added. Ichigaya Gold added.
18th of December 2008 – Chain expert revamped. Stats revamped. Re-union system added. Devil request system added.
Seems like a lot, right?
But let’s look at things a bit closer:
Acts
26th of February 2007 – Act 1 and 2 added.
4th of February 2007 – Act 3 and 4 added.
7th of June 2007 – Act 5-7 added
9th of August 2007 – Act 8-10 added.
25th of October 2007 – Act 11-12 added.
20th of December 2007 – Act 13 added.
19th of March 2008 – Act 14 added.
2rd of July 2008 – Act 15 added.
7th of August 2008 – Protopia Added. Act 16 added.
13 acts in 2007, reduced to only 3 new ones added in 2008. Average out to be 1 new act every 4 months in 2008.
Fields/Towns
9th of August 2007 – Arcadia, Souhonzan, Shinagawa and Ueno added.
7th of August 2008 – Protopia Added.
Err… no new fields for the last 1 years 4 months and Protopia came in only a year after Arcadia/Souhonzan. At this rate we’ll get a new town next August? God knows when new fields like Ikekuburo will get placed in.
Dungeons
18th of January 2007 – Cell Tower Bronze added
14th of February 2007 – Suginami Bronze and Ichigaya Bronze added.
4th of February 2007 – Suginami Silver and Ichigaya Silver added.
28th of June 2007 – Shibuya Quartz added (Level cap 70 at this point)
29th of November 2007 – Suginami Gold added (Level cap 80 at this point)
24th of January 2008 – Shinawaga Catacombs added.
22th of May 2008 – Suzaku Caravans Added. (Level cap 85 at this point)
21st of August 2008 – Ichigaya Gold added. (Level cap 90 at this point)
7 “dungeons” in 2007, 3 in 2008. Out of the 3 new dungeons in 2008, only Ichigaya Gold is of use to the 70+ population, making it a nice 9 months gap between new usable dungeons.
There’s also a nice 9 months gap between Sugi Silver and Sugi Gold too.
People only visit Suzaku Caravans and Shinagawa Catacombs for drops and Shibuya Quartz effectively dries off as an xp source in your 40s. So, judging base on previous cycles, for those in their 70s, are they expected to run Ichigaya Gold for another 9 months?
Auxiliary Stuff
This is where the bulk of the “major” patches are about.
26th of February 2007 – Klan system added.
21st of June 2007 – Bazaar System added
24th of August 2007 – Akuma Zensho Added
13th of September 2007 – Hair Syling System added
27th of September 2007 – Suginami, 3rd Home and Shinjuku Babel Comp Hack added,
25th of October 2007 – Enchant, friendship system, chain expert and G1 trial added.
20th of December 2007 – Tri-Union added. Klan system expanded.
24th of January 2008 – Riding system added.
21st of February 2008 – Plasma System added. User interface changed.
19th of March 2008 – Ichigaya Comp Hack Added,
22th of April 2008 – Act 0 added. Crafting/recycling/modification system added.
21st of August 2008 – Devil fusion attacks added.
18th of December 2008 – Chain expert revamped. Stats revamped. Re-union system added. Devil request system added.
I removed new world/channels since they aren’t technically “new”. Look at the last 3 entries under 2008. They went in 4 months gap compare to what happen before, where things come in 1-2 months intervals.
Half of the things in the auxiliary things are also features promised since early beta and if I removed those “promised features”, the list is even shorter.
On a side note, the version that the closed beta of Aeria used was based on the 9th of October version of the JP one. I’m not sure if it has been or has not been updated beyond that. The EN client is 3 months behind at this point, or 2 months behind when closed beta was conduced.
This is vastly lesser than the “a year or more” that some people believe. What you see is pretty much what you get.
Conclusion: Sure is a lot of content every 2-3months and Cave isn’t slowing down at all in adding new things. Me love talking out of my arse. ^_^
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okay if your going by that logic than WOW is also dieing, i love the fact that people are given an mmo and complain about the fact that the dev team takes time to come up with new content and ideas about how to make a game that is not already created and formed by a preset story, not to mention the fact that they are trying to match pre-existing notions that are set by Atlus as a company. Which are high standards to meet for both story and creature design, not to mention the fact that Cave has been working with Areia games to make the transition to international servers as seamless as possible, so dont lable a game as dead untill the devteam gets past that.
just my thoughts.
Sigh. This has already been posted by Anna here but hey, let’s repeat it again:
There’s an interview with the head developer of Imagine, Tera, on Nico Nico about the future that SMT is going to take.
In it, Tera flats out dodge EVERY single question that were about content and most of the time, he’s trying to promote Mini 4WD online, the other MMO Cave is running.
Links here:
http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5179272
http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5179829
http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5180507
Some of the question asked were:
Question: When is Tokyo Tower coming in?
Answer: No comment.
History: Cave had a contest in April 2007 to design a post-apocalypse version of Tokyo Tower for the game. Evidence here: http://www2.cave.co.jp/pickup/index.php?eid=88
The winning design has been chosen, and yet, nearly 2 years later, it’s still not implemented.
Question: When is the devil coliseum coming in?
Answer: No comment.
History: Cave promised a devil coliseum to be in by November 2007. Evidence here: http://www.4gamer.net/games/017/G001723/20070706175853/
1 year after, we are still not getting it.
There are a ton of other questions about RMT, bots, how ridiculous their lottery is etc… But I’m lazy to gather “evidence”.
There’s also an even earlier interview with him in dated around early 2007 where he promised things like a dungeon in Nakano, casinos etc… But unfortunately, it’s been removed, so no prove.
Seriously, am I suppose to cheer for a dev team like this?
Cave is able to design new cash shop/lottery items EVERY WEEK. A santa costume is very SMT and fits exactly with the game lore, right? http://observation365.web.fc2.com/card/20081127a.html
Also, while people imagine that Imagine(bad pun) takes place between SMT 1/2, it only partially fit.
Existing in-game lore/content already conflicts with preexisting notation from SMT 1/2. Good example: Uriel/Surt are now the heralds/commander of the army of Law/Chaos, a role different what what they did in SMt.
Suginami/Nakano isn’t even an area that was shown in SMT 1/2, but they are quite significant in Imagine. Also, a fairly important field, Ikekuburo isn’t even in.
They aren’t “slow” because they have to “match” existing game lore; they never really bother with existing lore in the first place.
Blizzard while slow, at least still deliver upon their promises.
Off-topic rant: I want to curse whoever is manning Cave’s server. 2m makka poofed all because their wonderful server crashed and depop my Nyarlthotep.
Not to mention that WoW has a way bigger world and more stuff to do to begin with. It doesn’t need content updates every month. Imagine on the other hand is pitiful small and offers not really much to do for a game that is nearly 2 years old now.
The rate of content seems fine from here, but the promising shit and reneging is pretty weak. And I gotta admit a lot of the time it really doesn’t jive with traditional Megaten. The universe is actually a mish-mash of of oldschool and shin megaten. Devil Busters was a video game within the universe of the original MT2, and only otherwise appeared in a Japanese PC88 game (later with a shoddy Win98 re-release) published by a company named ASCII called Giten Megami Tensei, which actually is virtually identical to IMAGINE, just 10 years earlier, not online, and with at least a few Eroguro scenes for good measure.
It is definitely giving a ton of nods to MT2 (was originally released without the Atlus “Shin”) …and follows the actual plot of that universe much more closely than SMT. Which I think is cool personally, cause MT2 is my fav (though IMAGINE beats it adjusted against technological inflation)
Outfits are retarded and completely unaccessorizable… and the skin selection is 19th century.