The claims of deleting and censoring negative statements about the game is very exaggerated. I'm not sure how "much of which they quickly delete and censor" and "I am visiting the MO support forum and looking at how many issues there are noted there. It's a ridiculously long list and growing daily" are both true.
I have seen them delete lots of threads threads in the last few days with people complaining about the hacking. These threads had lots of responses.. in at least one case there was even a response from a developer. Then a mod came and deleted the whole thread...
document.write(toLocalTime(1276504200)) Mon, June 14, 2010 at 4:30 am
Anti-hack systems will for obvious reason never show up in patch-notes.
And no, we don't f-around perma-ban is the only ban for stuff like this.
So once again it is impossible to prove the amount of censoring, but they sure are aggressively deleting all posts that complain about hacking. Which is their right as it's their board and I might be tempted to do the same were I in their situation. Long term though it isn't going to help the situation.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
By the same token, you avidly mine negative information and present it as pervasive and gamebreaking, without the benefit of personal experience in the game.
Your opinion is based completely on forum posts, which is why it falls short in both perspective and context.
Example: The server does not crash every 15 minutes. Sure, for someone totally reliant on forums posts as source material, it's easy to be fooled by all kinds of exaggerated claims born of nerdrage about server stability. People who actually play the game, however, know that while the server is not 100% stable yet, it does not crash every 15 minutes.
Forums are pretty questionable places. The accuracy of forum posters usually leaves a lot to be desired, but heck, I guess when you have nothing else to go on....
Partly true. I still have guildmates who have their 30 day sub, and I have played on their accounts. They have already set themselves to turn off their subscription, and for good reason.
As for the mining forum posts -- it's a reaching statement. Simply put, just go to the support forum. Every post on the page is from today, and goes into the second page. That means they are racking up problems and complaints at a pretty rapid pace, many of these problems that have existed for a long time. As for the server going down every 15 minutes -- perhaps not. It does go down often, and with Sebastian plainly saying their weekend support consists of "rebooting", it speaks volumes about their support structure for what is supposed to be a 24/7 persistent world.
I am not rooting for SV, but I'm not jeering against them. I think that their unethical business practices should be (and probably will be) punished, and if they manage to make a playable and fun game for people to enjoy they will enjoy the fruits of their labor. Right now they are using underhanded methods to get people to subscribe without their consent, to a game that is largely unfinished and frankly, not a whole lot of fun. Granted, if you think the game is fun then I can't disagree with your opinion on that, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I am here for the entertainment at this point, and MO has provided endless amounts of that so far. It's win-win for me.
On average the server goes down every couple of hours and is rebooted using an auto boot script that SV created. That is just an "on average" timeframe because sometimes the server keeps going down in spurts and sometimes you can play for multiple hours with no problem. Based on how bad the late beta was, it is somewhat of a miracle of where the game is post launch. There are still countless bugs to be fixed, however.
In terms of gameplay you're short on options for the moment. Because of the "unable to decrease skills" bug you won't really be able to keep increasing skills beyond a few days of playing. This is supposedly going to be fixed "soon."
Most people are just chopping trees for cash which is hilarious, if not immersion breaking when you walk past the sacred chopping tree.
Melee Combat functions fine for the most part. It is quite fun to time a perfect block and take 0 damage. Armor is unbalanced in that it is primarily only needed for PVP and does little for PVE. Archery is great for PVE but does little damage to armored targets in PVP. I've heard mixed results on magic ... most people are saying that its hard to skill up but that a horsed mage is a beast.
Conclusion: If you like sandboxes then MO will keep your attention for at least a couple of weeks in its current state. My only hope is that enough bugs are fixed within the next 2 weeks so that we can continue to advanced characters.
I can say I honestly don't care if the game fails or not (though the forums are humorous to follow, I give you that), but I tend to agree with general points Hercules is making. I'm not sure what kind of launch disasters you people are accustomed to, but when "it stays online for hours" is a measure of a great success, that is sad. I might have been spoiled by relatively smooth launches (WAR comes to mind), but dismissing any notion of MO's launch being bad because "there were worse" (What, is this board comprised 100% of Anarchy Online players? And I still have two active accounts on AO.) is like saying your homicide run isn't bad, because Bundy was worse. Come on.
I can say I honestly don't care if the game fails or not (though the forums are humorous to follow, I give you that), but I tend to agree with general points Hercules is making. I'm not sure what kind of launch disasters you people are accustomed to, but when "it stays online for hours" is a measure of a great success, that is sad. I might have been spoiled by relatively smooth launches (WAR comes to mind), but dismissing any notion of MO's launch being bad because "there were worse" (What, is this board comprised 100% of Anarchy Online players? And I still have two active accounts on AO.) is like saying your homicide run isn't bad, because Bundy was worse. Come on.
Precisely my point -- people want to set the bar lower and lower for game developers, so that people with no experience like SV who are out promising the world in their game are allowed to "have their vision". I'm sorry, but I am not a charity case here, and I don't give handouts to losers. StarVault's lead programmer has *never* worked on a full feature game in his life, and his only credits are some Unreal modding. Now if they can pull it off and make a great game, kudos to them -- but don't expect me to pat them on the back because they gave it a college try.
The unethical business practices just makes what is already a bad situation worse, and leaves a worse taste in my mouth. Some folks here defend that practice and I simply cannot, and that's another problem I have with the "defense of SV" going on lately as well.
and well MO will too, problem is that MO didnt have as much HYPE as DFO and as many loyal fans IMO, so they might die fast, unless they fix the hacking, #1 killer for a lot of people.
Time will tell, but I doubt SV can make MO very successful, they may stay a float for a few, but I doubt it.
GL SV, I warned you a long time ago in beta about that one company that sells hacks, and they already have them.
and well MO will too, problem is that MO didnt have as much HYPE as DFO and as many loyal fans IMO, so they might die fast, unless they fix the hacking, #1 killer for a lot of people.
Time will tell, but I doubt SV can make MO very successful, they may stay a float for a few, but I doubt it.
GL SV, I warned you a long time ago in beta about that one company that sells hacks, and they already have them.
The sad thing is you don't need to buy hacks for MO. I do understand why they censor that information, and it's the same reason I won't go into any detail either.
and well MO will too, problem is that MO didnt have as much HYPE as DFO and as many loyal fans IMO, so they might die fast, unless they fix the hacking, #1 killer for a lot of people.
Time will tell, but I doubt SV can make MO very successful, they may stay a float for a few, but I doubt it.
GL SV, I warned you a long time ago in beta about that one company that sells hacks, and they already have them.
DF lost more accounts due to their game have a tremendous amount of design flaws. Only some of it was due to hacking. Some of the design overhauls were were screaming for are core features in MO. If DF can get 15k-20k subs, I don't see why MO can't at least double that if they play their cards right. That's more than enough to stay afloat.
and well MO will too, problem is that MO didnt have as much HYPE as DFO and as many loyal fans IMO, so they might die fast, unless they fix the hacking, #1 killer for a lot of people.
Time will tell, but I doubt SV can make MO very successful, they may stay a float for a few, but I doubt it.
GL SV, I warned you a long time ago in beta about that one company that sells hacks, and they already have them.
Hacks are sold for a huge number of games. That in itself isn't a problem. Whether or not they are useful is the question.
A number of "complaints" about hacks are actually ads for them, as they attempt to make them look safe to use, and infer that you'll need them to be competitive (everyone's doing it). Then they provide links to sites that sell them.
Additionally, a very large number of those "perception warriors" who have been complaining have given links to videos that were between 3 and 6 months old.
Hey, I don't know anyone that actually believes that ANY game is completely hack-free. But in my opinion, there really hasn't been a credible case built on SV having zero control on policing hacks. I'll certainly agree that they do need to be extremely vigilant, and ban the players that use them.
and well MO will too, problem is that MO didnt have as much HYPE as DFO and as many loyal fans IMO, so they might die fast, unless they fix the hacking, #1 killer for a lot of people.
Time will tell, but I doubt SV can make MO very successful, they may stay a float for a few, but I doubt it.
GL SV, I warned you a long time ago in beta about that one company that sells hacks, and they already have them.
Hacks are sold for a huge number of games. That in itself isn't a problem. Whether or not they are useful is the question.
A number of "complaints" about hacks are actually ads for them, as they attempt to make them look safe to use, and infer that you'll need them to be competitive (everyone's doing it). Then they provide links to sites that sell them.
Additionally, a very large number of those "perception warriors" who have been complaining have given links to videos that were between 3 and 6 months old.
Hey, I don't know anyone that actually believes that ANY game is completely hack-free. But in my opinion, there really hasn't been a credible case built on SV having zero control on policing hacks. I'll certainly agree that they do need to be extremely vigilant, and ban the players that use them.
This.
I withold judgement on the success of SV's cheat detection system (as a whole, not just the auto-detect); I haven't seen any hacks in-game yet (and even then, if they're removed quickly enough then cool), but of course it's too early to judge.
but frankly I'm not impressed / worried by these videos. First, I've only seen footage from pre-launch, when SV openly stated that they were being lax on hack punishment in order to fine-tune their detection (and, I imagine, to make sure they get the hackers' $50 first before perma-banning em) . Frankly, it's not difficult to hack any game client. The measure of success in a cheat is it's undetectability, since being caught means you effectively lose 50 bucks for the MO license (that you can never use again) and however much for the hack.
About SV's censorship of cheat threads: Fact is, those threads were advertisements for hacks, since they all (to the best of my knowledge, anyway ) had links to the same 3 videos; These videos are blatant advertisements for the hack. It's a video of the product being used with the URL splashed on the screen. I'd be more upset at SV if they DIDN'T delete these... to me, that would seem like they were being lax with hackers, which is unacceptable.
Trust me, SV doesn't delete every thread with the word "cheat" in it. It's come up in beta, it'll come up now and later. Here's a thread where the OP questions MO's vulnerabilities to client-side hacking: http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/44770-how-much-client-side-operation.html This wasn't deleted because it didn't link to an ad, or make the false claim that MO is already crawling with hackers.
About SV's censorship of cheat threads: Fact is, those threads were advertisements for hacks, since they all (to the best of my knowledge, anyway ) had links to the same 3 videos; These videos are blatant advertisements for the hack. It's a video of the product being used with the URL splashed on the screen. I'd be more upset at SV if they DIDN'T delete these... to me, that would seem like they were being lax with hackers, which is unacceptable.
Actually that is INCORRECT. The thread I linked was not any kind of ad. The OP was a simple 3-4 sentence post complaining about the hacking and asking SV to fix it. There were numerous responses where people concured. Partway down the thread a developer responds as linked above. Could someone at some point have put a post in that linked hack sites? Sure it's possible.. but then you delete that post and ban the user if your only issue is the linking of the sites. When you delete the entire thread because someone, may have (or may not have) replied on page 2 with a link to a hack site... that's really stretching it. Again though.. it's their site and I would be tempted to do the same were I in their shoes. They certainly have the right to police it as they see fit.
To be clear: Hacking and cheating is the lowest of lows. Anyone doing it should be banned obviously.. along with anyone promoting it. The people producing it should be prosecuted if possible. Denying it, however.. is not very helpful to resolving the problem and claiming that everything is from 3 months ago is simply false as I watched a live stream the other day. This person was eventually caught, but he was livestreaming his cheating AND was in the Mortal IRC taking requests while he did so. That isn't exactly confidence building that their detection is working...
Time will tell though as I don't think ANYONE can accurately state the level of prevalence of cheating at this point!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
"The game world is indeed highly populated, we have a large world but with this amount of players the world "shrinks", of course its a good thing as long as it doesnt get to much so its unplayable. We better start working on that next continent cause the server keep getting more and more players.. But yes, when guilds build their cities they will probably spread more than they are today.
About those cheat tools, they are getting banned now as soon as they use them. We have no problems detecting and banning at the moment. You dont even have to care about reporting them cause we do find them very easy. During beta we let ppl use them for us to be able to detect them easier when setting up our systems, but now they are being whiped."
From Henrik himself.
This means we can nullify any hackers seen in the beta and we know of video proof of one hacker who is banned.
I've seen no hackers myself nor my guild, GM's are actively policing the server (or just standing in towns trying to help people). SV have not ignored the hacking websites continuously put onto their forums or we'd see hackers in-game.
Those people were chopping wood or mining rock to get their attributes up to cap. It will take you the majority of one day to cap your strength and constitution doing those two things. Considering it only takes up a day when in DF itt can take several months... I'd say it's a nice step in the right direction.
..and my attributes are 3/5ths of the way to cap. That's probably in about 3-4 hours.
Actually, I think this mentality is SO wrong. I don't want a game where I can do a repetitive thing for a number of hours (attributes) or days (skills) to MAX.
My dream-game would be one with a soft-cap, where I will NEVER actually hit max (or maybe if I'm a damn robot, in a couple of non-stop months).
All these new games cater to the young audience, that want to wow-lvl-80 in 1 week. That's what I call bull-shit, sir! Do you guys sincerely like that kind of mechanics?
Those people were chopping wood or mining rock to get their attributes up to cap. It will take you the majority of one day to cap your strength and constitution doing those two things. Considering it only takes up a day when in DF itt can take several months... I'd say it's a nice step in the right direction.
..and my attributes are 3/5ths of the way to cap. That's probably in about 3-4 hours.
Actually, I think this mentality is SO wrong. I don't want a game where I can do a repetitive thing for a number of hours (attributes) or days (skills) to MAX.
My dream-game would be one with a soft-cap, where I will NEVER actually hit max (or maybe if I'm a damn robot, in a couple of non-stop months).
All these new games cater to the young audience, that want to wow-lvl-80 in 1 week. That's what I call bull-shit, sir! Do you guys sincerely like that kind of mechanics?
In MO your attributes are not 'the grind' as stated it takes very little time to max them out.
In MO getting your characters skills maxed out and buying the armour and weapons is a constant steady grind which doesn't burn you out.
For guilds / small groups of players it's going to take a while to get several crafters decently level'd up to produce moderate - good armour and then even longer before the tier 3 resources become a valid option to use.
If you're a sucker for punishment join in the grind to get a city up and going but clearly looking at the prices a decent city will take a long time even for a large guild (such as mine) to get. Then you have sieging some time down the line to mess things up for those pretty cities :P
So getting back to the point although you may feel your character progresses very quickly compared to other games there are still long-term objectives for you / a group of people to accomplish.
Those people were chopping wood or mining rock to get their attributes up to cap. It will take you the majority of one day to cap your strength and constitution doing those two things. Considering it only takes up a day when in DF itt can take several months... I'd say it's a nice step in the right direction.
..and my attributes are 3/5ths of the way to cap. That's probably in about 3-4 hours.
Actually, I think this mentality is SO wrong. I don't want a game where I can do a repetitive thing for a number of hours (attributes) or days (skills) to MAX.
My dream-game would be one with a soft-cap, where I will NEVER actually hit max (or maybe if I'm a damn robot, in a couple of non-stop months).
All these new games cater to the young audience, that want to wow-lvl-80 in 1 week. That's what I call bull-shit, sir! Do you guys sincerely like that kind of mechanics?
I've played MO for a few months now, and I think I've chopped at one tree the entire time. There is no need to circle those trees, and in fact many players don't. A lot of players chopping trees doesn't mean everyone chops trees.
Also, there's a lot of secondary skills that don't count toward the skill cap, so that offers character progression beyond the 1000 primary skillpoints. And this game isn't about hitting the skill cap. That's why we're here, we don't want to grind stats all day, we want to become an active part of the game as quick as possible and then play the game. No skill cap can very easily turn into a situation where the new player will never stand a chance in a fight against an active veteran. The skill difference starts off too large and maintains that difference, more or less. To a lot of people this is not appealing...
Character customization and progression is important, but it's no where near as important as actually playing the game in my opinion. Though hopefully the skill trees are expanded over time.
No skill cap can very easily turn into a situation where the new player will never stand a chance in a fight against an active veteran. The skill difference starts off too large and maintains that difference, more or less.
And this is EXACTLY as it should be. If I play a LOT, I expect to be better (real-life skilled) and bigger (in-game skilled/geared) than a casual player.
No skill cap can very easily turn into a situation where the new player will never stand a chance in a fight against an active veteran. The skill difference starts off too large and maintains that difference, more or less.
And this is EXACTLY as it should be. If I play a LOT, I expect to be better (real-life skilled) and bigger (in-game skilled/geared) than a casual player.
P.S. Sorry for the off-topic.
Casual players probably won't be rolling in the top quality gear, there's your advantage for being a 'non' casual player. Not forgetting your higher skill level of controlling your character and knowing what to do.
No skill cap can very easily turn into a situation where the new player will never stand a chance in a fight against an active veteran. The skill difference starts off too large and maintains that difference, more or less.
And this is EXACTLY as it should be. If I play a LOT, I expect to be better (real-life skilled) and bigger (in-game skilled/geared) than a casual player.
P.S. Sorry for the off-topic.
This is what is wrong with Darkfall in my opinion. New players can't compete with veterans even many months down the line. This leads most of them to quit after about 3 months when they realize just how far they have to go.
There are so many other forms of grind in these types of games, huge character skill and attribute grinds are unnecessary. I'm glad Mortal Online is doing it this way...
So if this is the opinon of a good number of folks then why even have to level anything. Why not just come out with a game where everyone is already max whatever?
They did.. they are called FPS games.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
"The game world is indeed highly populated, we have a large world but with this amount of players the world "shrinks", of course its a good thing as long as it doesnt get to much so its unplayable. We better start working on that next continent cause the server keep getting more and more players.. But yes, when guilds build their cities they will probably spread more than they are today.
About those cheat tools, they are getting banned now as soon as they use them. We have no problems detecting and banning at the moment. You dont even have to care about reporting them cause we do find them very easy. During beta we let ppl use them for us to be able to detect them easier when setting up our systems, but now they are being whiped."
From Henrik himself.
This means we can nullify any hackers seen in the beta and we know of video proof of one hacker who is banned.
I've seen no hackers myself nor my guild, GM's are actively policing the server (or just standing in towns trying to help people). SV have not ignored the hacking websites continuously put onto their forums or we'd see hackers in-game.
I have to laugh when I see people believe SV without a lick of evidence that they can detect hackers.
I don't think people are going to use the obvious hacks during the paid period now, but they will certainly use them (and I will bet they are) to get ahead while leveling and slightly during the game PvP. I won't tell you how, but I know for a fact there's no cheat detection or prevention in MO, but I can prove my claims.
So if this is the opinon of a good number of folks then why even have to level anything. Why not just come out with a game where everyone is already max whatever?
They did.. they are called FPS games.
Thank you Slapshot!!! (might as well point out when I agree with you)
Mortal Online does require investing some time into developing your primary skills. The developer's target is a few weeks to maximize stats and primary skills. The idea is that your put more consideration into how you distribute your primary skills than how you grind up the skills. Also, you apparently totally ignored the secondary skill system. Secondary skills are not as powerful as primary skills, but can help to better develop and define your character. The secondary systems take much longer to fully develop.
I have to laugh when I see people believe Hercules without a lick of evidence that hackers can evade detection.
I don't think people are going to use the obvious hacks during the paid period now, but they will certainly use them (and I will bet they are) to get ahead while leveling and slightly during the game PvP. He won't tell you how, but Henrik Nystrom knows for a fact there is cheat detection or prevention in MO, but he can prove his claims.
Hercules can't.
Fixed it for you.
Sorry, but you have no more evidence of hackers or cheating than Starvault has of how their cheat detection works. Less evidence if you include Sebastian's comment about someone having all their character deleted and being banned from the game as the reason. http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/45099-all-3-chars-gone.html#post909077
and well MO will too, problem is that MO didnt have as much HYPE as DFO and as many loyal fans IMO, so they might die fast, unless they fix the hacking, #1 killer for a lot of people.
Time will tell, but I doubt SV can make MO very successful, they may stay a float for a few, but I doubt it.
GL SV, I warned you a long time ago in beta about that one company that sells hacks, and they already have them.
DF lost more accounts due to their game have a tremendous amount of design flaws. Only some of it was due to hacking. Some of the design overhauls were were screaming for are core features in MO. If DF can get 15k-20k subs, I don't see why MO can't at least double that if they play their cards right. That's more than enough to stay afloat.
I really doubt that 15-20k subs can keep a game afloat.. I think DFO is still around because AV gets money from the government , casino games that they create and probably from other sources as well. Does SV have any of that? The last claim AV made was that they had ~ 30 devs which I never beleived .. So lets say they have 10 devs ( how many does SV have? ) and they are being paid out of the money they get from the subs.. 20k ( lets be generous ) players at 15$ is 300,000$ . How much do those 10 devs get? That money is mostly gone already without even paying bills or repaying loans.
As far as hacking goes.. I was an expereince hacker about 11 or 12 years ago on the early FPS which kept client side data much like DF and MO.. It was very easy and I was never caught. Only the stupid / overconfident hackers get caught while the good ones keep on keeping on. I wouldnt doubt for a second the " elite " guilds on DF used hacks.
I will agree with Hercules on one thing.. People do seem to accept worse and worse and worse games anymore which allows for even worse games to be released because devs see that a POS game made some money so they throw out one too.
15-20k subs should be enough to keep the game afloat, but they can't really expand their team much, or any of the systems they have in place for getting content out to the players. For a small team, $225k - $300k monthly can't be putting them in the red.
Can't afford much in the way of advertising, can't afford to develop as much content for the game as would make all the difference in quality - at least not before a lot of people jump ship., etc.
But they can keep the game going. For how long, though, is the question.
For now, though, at least those 20k subs are buying the game for double or triple times the actual sub, so they're getting some good coin
Also, to me, 15-20k subs actually sounds like a lot more than I would expect them to have.
Comments
I have seen them delete lots of threads threads in the last few days with people complaining about the hacking. These threads had lots of responses.. in at least one case there was even a response from a developer. Then a mod came and deleted the whole thread...
Mortal Online hacks???
Sebastian Persson
document.write(toLocalTime(1276504200)) Mon, June 14, 2010 at 4:30 am
Anti-hack systems will for obvious reason never show up in patch-notes.
And no, we don't f-around perma-ban is the only ban for stuff like this.
So once again it is impossible to prove the amount of censoring, but they sure are aggressively deleting all posts that complain about hacking. Which is their right as it's their board and I might be tempted to do the same were I in their situation. Long term though it isn't going to help the situation.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Partly true. I still have guildmates who have their 30 day sub, and I have played on their accounts. They have already set themselves to turn off their subscription, and for good reason.
As for the mining forum posts -- it's a reaching statement. Simply put, just go to the support forum. Every post on the page is from today, and goes into the second page. That means they are racking up problems and complaints at a pretty rapid pace, many of these problems that have existed for a long time. As for the server going down every 15 minutes -- perhaps not. It does go down often, and with Sebastian plainly saying their weekend support consists of "rebooting", it speaks volumes about their support structure for what is supposed to be a 24/7 persistent world.
I am not rooting for SV, but I'm not jeering against them. I think that their unethical business practices should be (and probably will be) punished, and if they manage to make a playable and fun game for people to enjoy they will enjoy the fruits of their labor. Right now they are using underhanded methods to get people to subscribe without their consent, to a game that is largely unfinished and frankly, not a whole lot of fun. Granted, if you think the game is fun then I can't disagree with your opinion on that, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I am here for the entertainment at this point, and MO has provided endless amounts of that so far. It's win-win for me.
My experience so far:
On average the server goes down every couple of hours and is rebooted using an auto boot script that SV created. That is just an "on average" timeframe because sometimes the server keeps going down in spurts and sometimes you can play for multiple hours with no problem. Based on how bad the late beta was, it is somewhat of a miracle of where the game is post launch. There are still countless bugs to be fixed, however.
In terms of gameplay you're short on options for the moment. Because of the "unable to decrease skills" bug you won't really be able to keep increasing skills beyond a few days of playing. This is supposedly going to be fixed "soon."
Most people are just chopping trees for cash which is hilarious, if not immersion breaking when you walk past the sacred chopping tree.
Melee Combat functions fine for the most part. It is quite fun to time a perfect block and take 0 damage. Armor is unbalanced in that it is primarily only needed for PVP and does little for PVE. Archery is great for PVE but does little damage to armored targets in PVP. I've heard mixed results on magic ... most people are saying that its hard to skill up but that a horsed mage is a beast.
Conclusion: If you like sandboxes then MO will keep your attention for at least a couple of weeks in its current state. My only hope is that enough bugs are fixed within the next 2 weeks so that we can continue to advanced characters.
I can say I honestly don't care if the game fails or not (though the forums are humorous to follow, I give you that), but I tend to agree with general points Hercules is making. I'm not sure what kind of launch disasters you people are accustomed to, but when "it stays online for hours" is a measure of a great success, that is sad. I might have been spoiled by relatively smooth launches (WAR comes to mind), but dismissing any notion of MO's launch being bad because "there were worse" (What, is this board comprised 100% of Anarchy Online players? And I still have two active accounts on AO.) is like saying your homicide run isn't bad, because Bundy was worse. Come on.
Precisely my point -- people want to set the bar lower and lower for game developers, so that people with no experience like SV who are out promising the world in their game are allowed to "have their vision". I'm sorry, but I am not a charity case here, and I don't give handouts to losers. StarVault's lead programmer has *never* worked on a full feature game in his life, and his only credits are some Unreal modding. Now if they can pull it off and make a great game, kudos to them -- but don't expect me to pat them on the back because they gave it a college try.
The unethical business practices just makes what is already a bad situation worse, and leaves a worse taste in my mouth. Some folks here defend that practice and I simply cannot, and that's another problem I have with the "defense of SV" going on lately as well.
Your experience is of course your own and could be reflective of the general experience. Looks like they had some issues last night though:
http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/41756-server-status-thread-67.html
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
DFO lost thousands of subs due to hacking,
and well MO will too, problem is that MO didnt have as much HYPE as DFO and as many loyal fans IMO, so they might die fast, unless they fix the hacking, #1 killer for a lot of people.
Time will tell, but I doubt SV can make MO very successful, they may stay a float for a few, but I doubt it.
GL SV, I warned you a long time ago in beta about that one company that sells hacks, and they already have them.
The sad thing is you don't need to buy hacks for MO. I do understand why they censor that information, and it's the same reason I won't go into any detail either.
DF lost more accounts due to their game have a tremendous amount of design flaws. Only some of it was due to hacking. Some of the design overhauls were were screaming for are core features in MO. If DF can get 15k-20k subs, I don't see why MO can't at least double that if they play their cards right. That's more than enough to stay afloat.
Hacks are sold for a huge number of games. That in itself isn't a problem. Whether or not they are useful is the question.
A number of "complaints" about hacks are actually ads for them, as they attempt to make them look safe to use, and infer that you'll need them to be competitive (everyone's doing it). Then they provide links to sites that sell them.
Additionally, a very large number of those "perception warriors" who have been complaining have given links to videos that were between 3 and 6 months old.
Hey, I don't know anyone that actually believes that ANY game is completely hack-free. But in my opinion, there really hasn't been a credible case built on SV having zero control on policing hacks. I'll certainly agree that they do need to be extremely vigilant, and ban the players that use them.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
This.
I withold judgement on the success of SV's cheat detection system (as a whole, not just the auto-detect); I haven't seen any hacks in-game yet (and even then, if they're removed quickly enough then cool), but of course it's too early to judge.
but frankly I'm not impressed / worried by these videos. First, I've only seen footage from pre-launch, when SV openly stated that they were being lax on hack punishment in order to fine-tune their detection (and, I imagine, to make sure they get the hackers' $50 first before perma-banning em) . Frankly, it's not difficult to hack any game client. The measure of success in a cheat is it's undetectability, since being caught means you effectively lose 50 bucks for the MO license (that you can never use again) and however much for the hack.
About SV's censorship of cheat threads: Fact is, those threads were advertisements for hacks, since they all (to the best of my knowledge, anyway ) had links to the same 3 videos; These videos are blatant advertisements for the hack. It's a video of the product being used with the URL splashed on the screen. I'd be more upset at SV if they DIDN'T delete these... to me, that would seem like they were being lax with hackers, which is unacceptable.
Trust me, SV doesn't delete every thread with the word "cheat" in it. It's come up in beta, it'll come up now and later. Here's a thread where the OP questions MO's vulnerabilities to client-side hacking: http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/44770-how-much-client-side-operation.html This wasn't deleted because it didn't link to an ad, or make the false claim that MO is already crawling with hackers.
Actually that is INCORRECT. The thread I linked was not any kind of ad. The OP was a simple 3-4 sentence post complaining about the hacking and asking SV to fix it. There were numerous responses where people concured. Partway down the thread a developer responds as linked above. Could someone at some point have put a post in that linked hack sites? Sure it's possible.. but then you delete that post and ban the user if your only issue is the linking of the sites. When you delete the entire thread because someone, may have (or may not have) replied on page 2 with a link to a hack site... that's really stretching it. Again though.. it's their site and I would be tempted to do the same were I in their shoes. They certainly have the right to police it as they see fit.
To be clear: Hacking and cheating is the lowest of lows. Anyone doing it should be banned obviously.. along with anyone promoting it. The people producing it should be prosecuted if possible. Denying it, however.. is not very helpful to resolving the problem and claiming that everything is from 3 months ago is simply false as I watched a live stream the other day. This person was eventually caught, but he was livestreaming his cheating AND was in the Mortal IRC taking requests while he did so. That isn't exactly confidence building that their detection is working...
Time will tell though as I don't think ANYONE can accurately state the level of prevalence of cheating at this point!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/45439-population-size.html#post911817
"The game world is indeed highly populated, we have a large world but with this amount of players the world "shrinks", of course its a good thing as long as it doesnt get to much so its unplayable. We better start working on that next continent cause the server keep getting more and more players.. But yes, when guilds build their cities they will probably spread more than they are today.
About those cheat tools, they are getting banned now as soon as they use them. We have no problems detecting and banning at the moment. You dont even have to care about reporting them cause we do find them very easy. During beta we let ppl use them for us to be able to detect them easier when setting up our systems, but now they are being whiped."
From Henrik himself.
This means we can nullify any hackers seen in the beta and we know of video proof of one hacker who is banned.
I've seen no hackers myself nor my guild, GM's are actively policing the server (or just standing in towns trying to help people). SV have not ignored the hacking websites continuously put onto their forums or we'd see hackers in-game.
Actually, I think this mentality is SO wrong. I don't want a game where I can do a repetitive thing for a number of hours (attributes) or days (skills) to MAX.
My dream-game would be one with a soft-cap, where I will NEVER actually hit max (or maybe if I'm a damn robot, in a couple of non-stop months).
All these new games cater to the young audience, that want to wow-lvl-80 in 1 week. That's what I call bull-shit, sir! Do you guys sincerely like that kind of mechanics?
In MO your attributes are not 'the grind' as stated it takes very little time to max them out.
In MO getting your characters skills maxed out and buying the armour and weapons is a constant steady grind which doesn't burn you out.
For guilds / small groups of players it's going to take a while to get several crafters decently level'd up to produce moderate - good armour and then even longer before the tier 3 resources become a valid option to use.
If you're a sucker for punishment join in the grind to get a city up and going but clearly looking at the prices a decent city will take a long time even for a large guild (such as mine) to get. Then you have sieging some time down the line to mess things up for those pretty cities :P
So getting back to the point although you may feel your character progresses very quickly compared to other games there are still long-term objectives for you / a group of people to accomplish.
I've played MO for a few months now, and I think I've chopped at one tree the entire time. There is no need to circle those trees, and in fact many players don't. A lot of players chopping trees doesn't mean everyone chops trees.
Also, there's a lot of secondary skills that don't count toward the skill cap, so that offers character progression beyond the 1000 primary skillpoints. And this game isn't about hitting the skill cap. That's why we're here, we don't want to grind stats all day, we want to become an active part of the game as quick as possible and then play the game. No skill cap can very easily turn into a situation where the new player will never stand a chance in a fight against an active veteran. The skill difference starts off too large and maintains that difference, more or less. To a lot of people this is not appealing...
Character customization and progression is important, but it's no where near as important as actually playing the game in my opinion. Though hopefully the skill trees are expanded over time.
And this is EXACTLY as it should be. If I play a LOT, I expect to be better (real-life skilled) and bigger (in-game skilled/geared) than a casual player.
P.S. Sorry for the off-topic.
Casual players probably won't be rolling in the top quality gear, there's your advantage for being a 'non' casual player. Not forgetting your higher skill level of controlling your character and knowing what to do.
This is what is wrong with Darkfall in my opinion. New players can't compete with veterans even many months down the line. This leads most of them to quit after about 3 months when they realize just how far they have to go.
There are so many other forms of grind in these types of games, huge character skill and attribute grinds are unnecessary. I'm glad Mortal Online is doing it this way...
They did.. they are called FPS games.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I have to laugh when I see people believe SV without a lick of evidence that they can detect hackers.
I don't think people are going to use the obvious hacks during the paid period now, but they will certainly use them (and I will bet they are) to get ahead while leveling and slightly during the game PvP. I won't tell you how, but I know for a fact there's no cheat detection or prevention in MO, but I can prove my claims.
SV can't.
Thank you Slapshot!!! (might as well point out when I agree with you)
@parrotpholk:
Mortal Online does require investing some time into developing your primary skills. The developer's target is a few weeks to maximize stats and primary skills. The idea is that your put more consideration into how you distribute your primary skills than how you grind up the skills. Also, you apparently totally ignored the secondary skill system. Secondary skills are not as powerful as primary skills, but can help to better develop and define your character. The secondary systems take much longer to fully develop.
Fixed it for you.
Sorry, but you have no more evidence of hackers or cheating than Starvault has of how their cheat detection works. Less evidence if you include Sebastian's comment about someone having all their character deleted and being banned from the game as the reason. http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/45099-all-3-chars-gone.html#post909077
I really doubt that 15-20k subs can keep a game afloat.. I think DFO is still around because AV gets money from the government , casino games that they create and probably from other sources as well. Does SV have any of that? The last claim AV made was that they had ~ 30 devs which I never beleived .. So lets say they have 10 devs ( how many does SV have? ) and they are being paid out of the money they get from the subs.. 20k ( lets be generous ) players at 15$ is 300,000$ . How much do those 10 devs get? That money is mostly gone already without even paying bills or repaying loans.
As far as hacking goes.. I was an expereince hacker about 11 or 12 years ago on the early FPS which kept client side data much like DF and MO.. It was very easy and I was never caught. Only the stupid / overconfident hackers get caught while the good ones keep on keeping on. I wouldnt doubt for a second the " elite " guilds on DF used hacks.
I will agree with Hercules on one thing.. People do seem to accept worse and worse and worse games anymore which allows for even worse games to be released because devs see that a POS game made some money so they throw out one too.
15-20k subs should be enough to keep the game afloat, but they can't really expand their team much, or any of the systems they have in place for getting content out to the players. For a small team, $225k - $300k monthly can't be putting them in the red.
Can't afford much in the way of advertising, can't afford to develop as much content for the game as would make all the difference in quality - at least not before a lot of people jump ship., etc.
But they can keep the game going. For how long, though, is the question.
For now, though, at least those 20k subs are buying the game for double or triple times the actual sub, so they're getting some good coin
Also, to me, 15-20k subs actually sounds like a lot more than I would expect them to have.