I just want assurances that this will not allow any kind of x-server crap. The thing that made Daoc great was realm pride.
Realm pride was awesome in the beginning of DAoC, however once players started running multiple accounts in all 3 realms so they could spy or simply play on the winning side always, a bit of that pride died.
In the olden days that was what was considered P2W That and running a buffbot parked at the port-fort
Oh it was frowned upon at first, and then a year later if you didn't have at least 2 accounts you were a scrub.
But yeah x-realm play via multi accounts became common.
Uhh, maybe they should add some kind of progressive system that rewards player on lesser populated realm better than more populated ones?
That, and of course another reward system based on win/lose.
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.
MarkJacobsCEO City State EntertainmentMemberRarePosts: 649
I'd like to see actual tech demo for targetable body parts.
That's on the way. We've got some new features on their way and as soon as the re-abilitation team begins to move off that in the coming weeks, more features will be added quickly.
Plenty of games have had some form of that, much less so MMOs. Asherons Call does come to mind for MMOs though because it's high, mid, low strikes that could hit head, chest, and legs.
SWG had the 3 pools. I recall many WWF games having limb targeting. Mech games too. I hadn't seen it in other MMORPGs which is odd because armor in so many has taken specific damage, one would think targeting those areas wasn't far off.
Yep. We are certainly not he first to try to use body targeting as a mechanic in a game, not even the first in an MMORPG.
I did not even know that they were doing something like that -- the island system. That's pretty awesome.
CU's choice of building their entire system from scratch seems to be giving them a massive advantage over the other crowd-fund games. It's just a shame that it's so far from release(same for the other upcoming games).
Thanks! Yeah, I think it is a shame too. Fortunately, with the new folks in Seattle and more coming, we should be able to start making up some of that lost time, especially since I'm willing to go over budget and hire additional engineers.
Plenty of games have had some form of that, much less so MMOs. Asherons Call does come to mind for MMOs though because it's high, mid, low strikes that could hit head, chest, and legs.
Yeah, most MMOs don't use it so it wont affect the performance but regular single and 2 players games (particularly fighting games) have used this one way or another since the Commodore 64.
That doesn't mean it isn't a good feature as long as you use the armor of the point you hit instead of the whole bodies arnor, this way you ccan spot a weak place and strike it (which is sweet). I am just surprised that AoC didn't use it since it had so good collision detection.
The system seems gimmicky. I agree that each part should have it's own armor class, but if there are no negative affects from wearing heavy/high armor pieces in every area, then essentially there will be no 'weak' points to expose.
Like Mech Warrior, as mentioned, you couldn't put armor every where and still have free tonnage to equip weapons or jump jets. I'm interested to see what they do with it and how it is implemented into an MMORPG setting.
It's good to see this game making progress.
Thanks! If the system turns out to be not fun/PITA, I'll scrap it and use a simpler hit point system. The good news is that even if we have to do that, we don't have to rewrite all or even a major part of the combat system as opposed to if we had to do it the other way.
End Part I of responses.
Mark Jacobs CEO, City State Entertainment
MarkJacobsCEO City State EntertainmentMemberRarePosts: 649
I just want assurances that this will not allow any kind of x-server crap. The thing that made Daoc great was realm pride.
It won't. As pointed out below, this tech has nothing to do with cross-realming at all. It is a pretty cool bit of tech which not only allows us to have servers (as in the physical boxes) that could be oceans away but to the players, it is seamless. So, not only are the lines between servers invisible but you/abilities can cross over them as if they were all on the same server. It also allows us to have people communicate/view/interact between different games if we wanted as long as we follow a standard API/protocol.
I almost lost confidence, but after the last month we are back on track and: Obi-Wan Mark Jacobs you're our only hope! At least now that Andrew is floating on a pink fluffy cloud lost in love and writing sugar coated letters for his wife instead of hardcore code!!!!!
They are both programmers and very, very smart and talented people. They could be exchanging code snippets too.
In terms of losing confidence, as I've said here, there and everywhere, I understand if people do/have done that. We are late, there's no denying that. OTOH, our Backers get to interact with us daily, play in builds constantly so we are not hiding our status from those that backed the game. Plus, with the opening of the Seattle branch, I/other investor are showing our commitment to deliver this game even if it costs us more money. And, as was noted by Rob here, we are not sending out letters to our Backers asking for more support, running telethons, etc. Hopefully, that will give all our Backers even more confidence in our efforts.
I just want assurances that this will not allow any kind of x-server crap. The thing that made Daoc great was realm pride.
They have stated in the past that you can only play one faction per server, and to change factions you have to delete all your characters from a server to do so. Some of the kickstarter packages even lock your account into one realm as a whole and they even say if you change factions you will lose access to your exclusive items ones deleting your characters.
Is that an actual screenshot from teh game in the first post? If it is the game looks dated
We have always said, even before the Kickstarter, that our game will never be the best looking game on the planet. It is impossible for any game to have the best graphics in the industry, large-scale battles (800-1K) and still run on a wide range of PCs unless they cull the heck out of it. As always, it boils down to poly count (actually, triangles or tris), and something has to give. Games like BDO, which look awesome, can't handle our goal of large-scale battles and run on older video cards, no matter how clever the programmer since all of us are hardware bound. So, something has to give. You either cull the heck out of the scene or cut the tris per character, per environmental scene, etc.
Fortunately, what what have shown already is that our new forest biome, which is not nearly feature-complete, will look great as we lock down our lightning model, finish up our work on PBR/HDR (which we are working on now) and add more cool stuff to the area. Also, the people who back our game know exactly what they are going to get, and I think we will easily exceed the low expectations I set for the game's graphics during the Kickstarter. And yes, I did set those expectations low on purpose because at the end of the day, as noted elsewhere, it is large-scale battles and gameplay that will set this game apart, not the quality of its graphics.
Mark Jacobs CEO, City State Entertainment
MarkJacobsCEO City State EntertainmentMemberRarePosts: 649
The forests will be great. Especially at night with an overcast sky.. you will not be able to see beyond the sphere of your own torchlight. I get shivers just thinking about this.
The new server tech seems quite groundbreaking to me. I can not wait to learn more about this feature.
I am ready to start playing...
Yep, that's what we are going for. Shivers down your spine until somebody inserts a blade there.
I'm still hype about this one. This is the type of project jat time can be taken. The vision is ahead of the curve.
Thanks so much for that. The key, in terms of the vision, is that I/we are willing to change it if it doesn't work the way it has to in order for us to be successful. I'm not so tied to "the vision" that I refuse to change things. That is a very important thing to keep in mind.
This is the only indie/crowdfunding mmo I think has a chance to get a decent population. It's also the only one I think that will actually launch. I can't wait to hear more about it as the development gets closer to launch.
Thanks! I do hope the other crowd-funded MMOs launch too, we need more KS-backed successes to keep things rolling along.
I just want assurances that this will not allow any kind of x-server crap. The thing that made Daoc great was realm pride.
Realm pride was awesome in the beginning of DAoC, however once players started running multiple accounts in all 3 realms so they could spy or simply play on the winning side always, a bit of that pride died.
Unfortunately, you are right. Hopefully there will not happen here but, as always, time will tell.
I just want assurances that this will not allow any kind of x-server crap. The thing that made Daoc great was realm pride.
Realm pride was awesome in the beginning of DAoC, however once players started running multiple accounts in all 3 realms so they could spy or simply play on the winning side always, a bit of that pride died.
In the olden days that was what was considered P2W That and running a buffbot parked at the port-fort
Yep. That's one of the reasons we're designed the abilities the way we are to prevent folks from having a buffbot conveniently parked somewhere on the map.
I just want assurances that this will not allow any kind of x-server crap. The thing that made Daoc great was realm pride.
Realm pride was awesome in the beginning of DAoC, however once players started running multiple accounts in all 3 realms so they could spy or simply play on the winning side always, a bit of that pride died.
In the olden days that was what was considered P2W That and running a buffbot parked at the port-fort
Oh it was frowned upon at first, and then a year later if you didn't have at least 2 accounts you were a scrub.
But yeah x-realm play via multi accounts became common.
Uhh, maybe they should add some kind of progressive system that rewards player on lesser populated realm better than more populated ones?
That, and of course another reward system based on win/lose.
Already part of the plan. I talked about that before, during, and after the Kickstarter. Andrew calls it "making it fun to lose" and I couldn't agree more.
X Realming is a whole other barrel of kittens! An unfortunate side effect of playing to win (or advantage rather) vs playing for fun (or just the joy of fighting).
Yep, sadly.
Bye folks, thanks for the comments and as always, thank you Tim, Bill and MMORPG for the coverage!
I just want assurances that this will not allow any kind of x-server crap. The thing that made Daoc great was realm pride.
It won't. As pointed out below, this tech has nothing to do with cross-realming at all. It is a pretty cool bit of tech which not only allows us to have servers (as in the physical boxes) that could be oceans away but to the players, it is seamless. So, not only are the lines between servers invisible but you/abilities can cross over them as if they were all on the same server. It also allows us to have people communicate/view/interact between different games if we wanted as long as we follow a standard API/protocol.
I almost lost confidence, but after the last month we are back on track and: Obi-Wan Mark Jacobs you're our only hope! At least now that Andrew is floating on a pink fluffy cloud lost in love and writing sugar coated letters for his wife instead of hardcore code!!!!!
They are both programmers and very, very smart and talented people. They could be exchanging code snippets too.
In terms of losing confidence, as I've said here, there and everywhere, I understand if people do/have done that. We are late, there's no denying that. OTOH, our Backers get to interact with us daily, play in builds constantly so we are not hiding our status from those that backed the game. Plus, with the opening of the Seattle branch, I/other investor are showing our commitment to deliver this game even if it costs us more money. And, as was noted by Rob here, we are not sending out letters to our Backers asking for more support, running telethons, etc. Hopefully, that will give all our Backers even more confidence in our efforts.
I just want assurances that this will not allow any kind of x-server crap. The thing that made Daoc great was realm pride.
They have stated in the past that you can only play one faction per server, and to change factions you have to delete all your characters from a server to do so. Some of the kickstarter packages even lock your account into one realm as a whole and they even say if you change factions you will lose access to your exclusive items ones deleting your characters.
Is that an actual screenshot from teh game in the first post? If it is the game looks dated
We have always said, even before the Kickstarter, that our game will never be the best looking game on the planet. It is impossible for any game to have the best graphics in the industry, large-scale battles (800-1K) and still run on a wide range of PCs unless they cull the heck out of it. As always, it boils down to poly count (actually, triangles or tris), and something has to give. Games like BDO, which look awesome, can't handle our goal of large-scale battles and run on older video cards, no matter how clever the programmer since all of us are hardware bound. So, something has to give. You either cull the heck out of the scene or cut the tris per character, per environmental scene, etc.
Fortunately, what what have shown already is that our new forest biome, which is not nearly feature-complete, will look great as we lock down our lightning model, finish up our work on PBR/HDR (which we are working on now) and add more cool stuff to the area. Also, the people who back our game know exactly what they are going to get, and I think we will easily exceed the low expectations I set for the game's graphics during the Kickstarter. And yes, I did set those expectations low on purpose because at the end of the day, as noted elsewhere, it is large-scale battles and gameplay that will set this game apart, not the quality of its graphics.
I just want assurances that this will not allow any kind of x-server crap. The thing that made Daoc great was realm pride.
It won't. As pointed out below, this tech has nothing to do with cross-realming at all. It is a pretty cool bit of tech which not only allows us to have servers (as in the physical boxes) that could be oceans away but to the players, it is seamless. So, not only are the lines between servers invisible but you/abilities can cross over them as if they were all on the same server. It also allows us to have people communicate/view/interact between different games if we wanted as long as we follow a standard API/protocol.
I almost lost confidence, but after the last month we are back on track and: Obi-Wan Mark Jacobs you're our only hope! At least now that Andrew is floating on a pink fluffy cloud lost in love and writing sugar coated letters for his wife instead of hardcore code!!!!!
They are both programmers and very, very smart and talented people. They could be exchanging code snippets too.
In terms of losing confidence, as I've said here, there and everywhere, I understand if people do/have done that. We are late, there's no denying that. OTOH, our Backers get to interact with us daily, play in builds constantly so we are not hiding our status from those that backed the game. Plus, with the opening of the Seattle branch, I/other investor are showing our commitment to deliver this game even if it costs us more money. And, as was noted by Rob here, we are not sending out letters to our Backers asking for more support, running telethons, etc. Hopefully, that will give all our Backers even more confidence in our efforts.
I just want assurances that this will not allow any kind of x-server crap. The thing that made Daoc great was realm pride.
They have stated in the past that you can only play one faction per server, and to change factions you have to delete all your characters from a server to do so. Some of the kickstarter packages even lock your account into one realm as a whole and they even say if you change factions you will lose access to your exclusive items ones deleting your characters.
Is that an actual screenshot from teh game in the first post? If it is the game looks dated
We have always said, even before the Kickstarter, that our game will never be the best looking game on the planet. It is impossible for any game to have the best graphics in the industry, large-scale battles (800-1K) and still run on a wide range of PCs unless they cull the heck out of it. As always, it boils down to poly count (actually, triangles or tris), and something has to give. Games like BDO, which look awesome, can't handle our goal of large-scale battles and run on older video cards, no matter how clever the programmer since all of us are hardware bound. So, something has to give. You either cull the heck out of the scene or cut the tris per character, per environmental scene, etc.
Fortunately, what what have shown already is that our new forest biome, which is not nearly feature-complete, will look great as we lock down our lightning model, finish up our work on PBR/HDR (which we are working on now) and add more cool stuff to the area. Also, the people who back our game know exactly what they are going to get, and I think we will easily exceed the low expectations I set for the game's graphics during the Kickstarter. And yes, I did set those expectations low on purpose because at the end of the day, as noted elsewhere, it is large-scale battles and gameplay that will set this game apart, not the quality of its graphics.
Actually, this technology was available 25 years ago in a game called MechWarrior
Yep remember it well took time off for the birth of my son. But the birth was late, being locked in a house with a 42 week pregnant wife and her insane mother. ...... well destroying mechs was a huge stress relief.
i wish more people in the industry were like mark jacobs. It nice to have some transparancey/honesty the industry could use more of it
Honestly, it is happening more and more. The major difference is that some people simply can't do any wrong. With all due respect to Mark, there have been well documented cases of developers being, essentially, flayed over delays, but with Mark people are like "Man! He's so transparent! We need more of this!"
Trust me, I'm a huge supporter of transparency, especially with crowdfunding, but Mark Jacobs might as well be the WoW of developers because he can't do any wrong. Even look at his KS Campaign. He basically had NOTHING to show coming into it until the very end when they showed hundreds of robotic, untextured, models walking along pre-defined paths. That was the extent of it, and people just thought that was the greatest. The majority of Kickstarters would fail with this level of initial effort.
PS I'm really sorry Mark, please don't be mad at me. Love.... Me!!!
Some of those old N64 games had targetable body parts Goldeneye, Perfect Dark etc. That's one thing I've missed where each body part is pretty much it's own program.
i wish more people in the industry were like mark jacobs. It nice to have some transparancey/honesty the industry could use more of it
Honestly, it is happening more and more. The major difference is that some people simply can't do any wrong. With all due respect to Mark, there have been well documented cases of developers being, essentially, flayed over delays, but with Mark people are like "Man! He's so transparent! We need more of this!"
Trust me, I'm a huge supporter of transparency, especially with crowdfunding, but Mark Jacobs might as well be the WoW of developers because he can't do any wrong. Even look at his KS Campaign. He basically had NOTHING to show coming into it until the very end when they showed hundreds of robotic, untextured, models walking along pre-defined paths. That was the extent of it, and people just thought that was the greatest. The majority of Kickstarters would fail with this level of initial effort.
PS I'm really sorry Mark, please don't be mad at me. Love.... Me!!!
MJ is pretty much a legend in the gaming industry. He just has to say "I have an idea", and folks start throwing money at him. The good thing about that is, he is willing to match dollar for dollar. I don't know of any other indie developers that have that much faith in their own product.
i wish more people in the industry were like mark jacobs. It nice to have some transparancey/honesty the industry could use more of it
Honestly, it is happening more and more. The major difference is that some people simply can't do any wrong. With all due respect to Mark, there have been well documented cases of developers being, essentially, flayed over delays, but with Mark people are like "Man! He's so transparent! We need more of this!"
Trust me, I'm a huge supporter of transparency, especially with crowdfunding, but Mark Jacobs might as well be the WoW of developers because he can't do any wrong. Even look at his KS Campaign. He basically had NOTHING to show coming into it until the very end when they showed hundreds of robotic, untextured, models walking along pre-defined paths. That was the extent of it, and people just thought that was the greatest. The majority of Kickstarters would fail with this level of initial effort.
PS I'm really sorry Mark, please don't be mad at me. Love.... Me!!!
MJ is pretty much a legend in the gaming industry. He just has to say "I have an idea", and folks start throwing money at him. The good thing about that is, he is willing to match dollar for dollar. I don't know of any other indie developers that have that much faith in their own product.
I think it probably happens more than you think. I mean many come into these projects already significantly invested. I don't deny his contributions to the industry, but there are plenty of other "legends" of the industry who have been raked over the coals for similarly horrible KS campaigns. You can't honestly tell me that you felt like the CU KS campaign was one of the top 10 campaigns. I wouldn't even say it was in the top 20 or 30. Had it been any other name, it would have failed.
I'm not saying anything about MJ or his contributions or his worthiness of being a developer. What I'm saying is that he hasn't been any more transparent than many other crowdfunded projects (maybe even the majority of them), so let's pump the brakes and just recognize that this is an industry-wide trend and isn't something that is exclusive to CU by any means.
Well MJ is not perfect. He was involved in the DAoC debacle that basically killed the game for many when they initiated a long quest line to give god like powers in game to a select few. Instead of fixing the game with a major nerf of such powers, they did some minor tinkering which lead to a major drop in the player base. Hope he has learned from that experience.
I love it when a developer like Mark Jacobs is spending his precious time right here with us
No unchaining me from Camelot now
Thanks! Before and during the Kickstarter I promised that once we funded I wouldn't go all Willy Wonka and disappear from forums, sites, etc. This is one of the ways I keep that promise. Plus, I've been doing this stuff since the 80s and I do enjoy it.
i wish more people in the industry were like mark jacobs. It nice to have some transparancey/honesty the industry could use more of it
Thanks. I'm not perfect (obviously), but I do think that developers need to be as upfront as possible, especially on a crowd-funded game. While there really is a crappy dark side to developer/player interactions (on both ends), I still believe that the way we are all more connected now can lead to a much better and more interesting future *if* both sides don't muck it up.
i wish more people in the industry were like mark jacobs. It nice to have some transparancey/honesty the industry could use more of it
MJ is a rarity and I don't mean the My Little Pony! Always awesome to have him pop out of stealth and talk to us.
As per CU looking dated, I think it looks great. I can't name a single MMO that can put up their numbers at all let alone while looking this good. Fall biome looks fantastic.
My pleasure. Yeah, the fall biome looks great and it will look even better within the next 30 days. We have some additional graphic improvements to our engine (things like HDR) coming in the next month and we had a nice chat with our partners at Nvidia yesterday about other graphic bits of their tech we can use (that will work on other than Nvidia cards in case anybody is worrying).
i wish more people in the industry were like mark jacobs. It nice to have some transparancey/honesty the industry could use more of it
Honestly, it is happening more and more. The major difference is that some people simply can't do any wrong. With all due respect to Mark, there have been well documented cases of developers being, essentially, flayed over delays, but with Mark people are like "Man! He's so transparent! We need more of this!"
Trust me, I'm a huge supporter of transparency, especially with crowdfunding, but Mark Jacobs might as well be the WoW of developers because he can't do any wrong. Even look at his KS Campaign. He basically had NOTHING to show coming into it until the very end when they showed hundreds of robotic, untextured, models walking along pre-defined paths. That was the extent of it, and people just thought that was the greatest. The majority of Kickstarters would fail with this level of initial effort.
PS I'm really sorry Mark, please don't be mad at me. Love.... Me!!!
Aww, no worries, I still love you too! In truth, what we showed was a little bit more challenging technically than you say, but you are right that we had a lot less than some other developers. I think it was a combination of my track record and the subject matter but don't underestimate the value of the ideas we showed as well as my willingness to put a significant amount of my own money into the game. I think that my willingness to put my money where my mouth is, helped a lot of people take a chance on the Kickstarter.
And I do think transparency is happening more, and it needs to, especially with any Kickstarted/crowd-funded game. Nothing less than that is acceptable, at least in my opinion.
i wish more people in the industry were like mark jacobs. It nice to have some transparancey/honesty the industry could use more of it
Honestly, it is happening more and more. The major difference is that some people simply can't do any wrong. With all due respect to Mark, there have been well documented cases of developers being, essentially, flayed over delays, but with Mark people are like "Man! He's so transparent! We need more of this!"
Trust me, I'm a huge supporter of transparency, especially with crowdfunding, but Mark Jacobs might as well be the WoW of developers because he can't do any wrong. Even look at his KS Campaign. He basically had NOTHING to show coming into it until the very end when they showed hundreds of robotic, untextured, models walking along pre-defined paths. That was the extent of it, and people just thought that was the greatest. The majority of Kickstarters would fail with this level of initial effort.
PS I'm really sorry Mark, please don't be mad at me. Love.... Me!!!
Aww, no worries, I still love you too! In truth, what we showed was a little bit more challenging technically than you say, but you are right that we had a lot less than some other developers. I think it was a combination of my track record and the subject matter but don't underestimate the value of the ideas we showed as well as my willingness to put a significant amount of my own money into the game. I think that my willingness to put my money where my mouth is, helped a lot of people take a chance on the Kickstarter.
And I do think transparency is happening more, and it needs to, especially with any Kickstarted/crowd-funded game. Nothing less than that is acceptable, at least in my opinion.
Yeah, don't get me wrong, I wasn't poo-pooing your KS campaign. I was just saying that there are other campaigns with more work which got much less. It wasn't as bad as, say...... John Romero's first KS (sorry John, love you!) where the concept was freakin' solid, but the content was horribad.
As far as investing your own money, I think that expressing that is a VERY strong tactic to obtain funding. I was merely saying that there are projects (say Dual Universe most recently) which have significant amounts of time and money already invested which some people seem to discount. So maybe simply verbalizing that is more powerful than many realize.
I couldn't agree with you more on transparency. I think that we're approaching a point where education of things like process, expectations, etc. is better, so maybe in the next 5-7 years it will be much more effective. As it stands today, I think that there is still fairly large gap as evidenced mostly by people dumping on things like crowdfunding or early access because the feeling is that people are just there to cash in, like you're rolling to dough. What they don't seem to get is that the reality of the situation is that most of these developers probably don't have two nickels to rub together, let along a pool of money kicking around. I think once that misconception dies off, there can probably be more intelligent conversations on the subject of transparency.
If we can recapture the magic that was DaoC it will be great. Realm pride and rushing out to meet any invaders who dared to set foot upon your land.
I was Mid, Mid, Mid! But so far I am honestly most hyped for what I see in Hibernia, which is horrible because I hate Hibbies, lol. The old classic song "Dem Hibbies" is still out there for anyone who wants to take the time to look it up and enjoy the nostalgia.
I should add I like the look of the Pict race most of all so far but not sure I can be Alb either.
If we can recapture the magic that was DaoC it will be great. Realm pride and rushing out to meet any invaders who dared to set foot upon your land.
I was Mid, Mid, Mid! But so far I am honestly most hyped for what I see in Hibernia, which is horrible because I hate Hibbies, lol. The old classic song "Dem Hibbies" is still out there for anyone who wants to take the time to look it up and enjoy the nostalgia.
I should add I like the look of the Pict race most of all so far but not sure I can be Alb either.
Comments
That, and of course another reward system based on win/lose.
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.
That's on the way. We've got some new features on their way and as soon as the re-abilitation team begins to move off that in the coming weeks, more features will be added quickly.
Yep. We are certainly not he first to try to use body targeting as a mechanic in a game, not even the first in an MMORPG.
Thanks! Hopefully it will keep rising over and through the Beta 1 period.
Yep. The ceremony/party were great. Nobody was killed/wounded and no blood drawn and no ducks were harmed in the process.
Thanks! Yeah, I think it is a shame too. Fortunately, with the new folks in Seattle and more coming, we should be able to start making up some of that lost time, especially since I'm willing to go over budget and hire additional engineers.
Thanks! If the system turns out to be not fun/PITA, I'll scrap it and use a simpler hit point system. The good news is that even if we have to do that, we don't have to rewrite all or even a major part of the combat system as opposed to if we had to do it the other way.
End Part I of responses.
Mark Jacobs
CEO, City State Entertainment
It won't. As pointed out below, this tech has nothing to do with cross-realming at all. It is a pretty cool bit of tech which not only allows us to have servers (as in the physical boxes) that could be oceans away but to the players, it is seamless. So, not only are the lines between servers invisible but you/abilities can cross over them as if they were all on the same server. It also allows us to have people communicate/view/interact between different games if we wanted as long as we follow a standard API/protocol.
They are both programmers and very, very smart and talented people. They could be exchanging code snippets too.
In terms of losing confidence, as I've said here, there and everywhere, I understand if people do/have done that. We are late, there's no denying that. OTOH, our Backers get to interact with us daily, play in builds constantly so we are not hiding our status from those that backed the game. Plus, with the opening of the Seattle branch, I/other investor are showing our commitment to deliver this game even if it costs us more money. And, as was noted by Rob here, we are not sending out letters to our Backers asking for more support, running telethons, etc. Hopefully, that will give all our Backers even more confidence in our efforts.
Nope, as noted below, that's not what is happening at all.
Yep, and more.
I'll tell him for you.
+1, QFT, etc.
We have always said, even before the Kickstarter, that our game will never be the best looking game on the planet. It is impossible for any game to have the best graphics in the industry, large-scale battles (800-1K) and still run on a wide range of PCs unless they cull the heck out of it. As always, it boils down to poly count (actually, triangles or tris), and something has to give. Games like BDO, which look awesome, can't handle our goal of large-scale battles and run on older video cards, no matter how clever the programmer since all of us are hardware bound. So, something has to give. You either cull the heck out of the scene or cut the tris per character, per environmental scene, etc.
Fortunately, what what have shown already is that our new forest biome, which is not nearly feature-complete, will look great as we lock down our lightning model, finish up our work on PBR/HDR (which we are working on now) and add more cool stuff to the area. Also, the people who back our game know exactly what they are going to get, and I think we will easily exceed the low expectations I set for the game's graphics during the Kickstarter. And yes, I did set those expectations low on purpose because at the end of the day, as noted elsewhere, it is large-scale battles and gameplay that will set this game apart, not the quality of its graphics.
Mark Jacobs
CEO, City State Entertainment
Yep, that's what we are going for. Shivers down your spine until somebody inserts a blade there.
Thanks!
Thanks so much for that. The key, in terms of the vision, is that I/we are willing to change it if it doesn't work the way it has to in order for us to be successful. I'm not so tied to "the vision" that I refuse to change things. That is a very important thing to keep in mind.
Thanks! I do hope the other crowd-funded MMOs launch too, we need more KS-backed successes to keep things rolling along.
Unfortunately, you are right. Hopefully there will not happen here but, as always, time will tell.
Yep. That's one of the reasons we're designed the abilities the way we are to prevent folks from having a buffbot conveniently parked somewhere on the map.
Already part of the plan. I talked about that before, during, and after the Kickstarter. Andrew calls it "making it fun to lose" and I couldn't agree more.
Yep, sadly.
Bye folks, thanks for the comments and as always, thank you Tim, Bill and MMORPG for the coverage!
Mark Jacobs
CEO, City State Entertainment
I suspect CU will be my main game for years.
*pfft* what do you know? :pleased:
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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No unchaining me from Camelot now
Thanks for stopping by and replying. It's always great to see dev interaction.
Smile
Honestly, it is happening more and more. The major difference is that some people simply can't do any wrong. With all due respect to Mark, there have been well documented cases of developers being, essentially, flayed over delays, but with Mark people are like "Man! He's so transparent! We need more of this!"
Trust me, I'm a huge supporter of transparency, especially with crowdfunding, but Mark Jacobs might as well be the WoW of developers because he can't do any wrong. Even look at his KS Campaign. He basically had NOTHING to show coming into it until the very end when they showed hundreds of robotic, untextured, models walking along pre-defined paths. That was the extent of it, and people just thought that was the greatest. The majority of Kickstarters would fail with this level of initial effort.
PS I'm really sorry Mark, please don't be mad at me. Love.... Me!!!
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
I think it probably happens more than you think. I mean many come into these projects already significantly invested. I don't deny his contributions to the industry, but there are plenty of other "legends" of the industry who have been raked over the coals for similarly horrible KS campaigns. You can't honestly tell me that you felt like the CU KS campaign was one of the top 10 campaigns. I wouldn't even say it was in the top 20 or 30. Had it been any other name, it would have failed.
I'm not saying anything about MJ or his contributions or his worthiness of being a developer. What I'm saying is that he hasn't been any more transparent than many other crowdfunded projects (maybe even the majority of them), so let's pump the brakes and just recognize that this is an industry-wide trend and isn't something that is exclusive to CU by any means.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Thanks! Before and during the Kickstarter I promised that once we funded I wouldn't go all Willy Wonka and disappear from forums, sites, etc. This is one of the ways I keep that promise. Plus, I've been doing this stuff since the 80s and I do enjoy it.
Thanks. I'm not perfect (obviously), but I do think that developers need to be as upfront as possible, especially on a crowd-funded game. While there really is a crappy dark side to developer/player interactions (on both ends), I still believe that the way we are all more connected now can lead to a much better and more interesting future *if* both sides don't muck it up.
You're welcome!
My pleasure. Yeah, the fall biome looks great and it will look even better within the next 30 days. We have some additional graphic improvements to our engine (things like HDR) coming in the next month and we had a nice chat with our partners at Nvidia yesterday about other graphic bits of their tech we can use (that will work on other than Nvidia cards in case anybody is worrying).
Aww, no worries, I still love you too!
And I do think transparency is happening more, and it needs to, especially with any Kickstarted/crowd-funded game. Nothing less than that is acceptable, at least in my opinion.
Mark Jacobs
CEO, City State Entertainment
Yeah, don't get me wrong, I wasn't poo-pooing your KS campaign. I was just saying that there are other campaigns with more work which got much less. It wasn't as bad as, say...... John Romero's first KS (sorry John, love you!) where the concept was freakin' solid, but the content was horribad.
As far as investing your own money, I think that expressing that is a VERY strong tactic to obtain funding. I was merely saying that there are projects (say Dual Universe most recently) which have significant amounts of time and money already invested which some people seem to discount. So maybe simply verbalizing that is more powerful than many realize.
I couldn't agree with you more on transparency. I think that we're approaching a point where education of things like process, expectations, etc. is better, so maybe in the next 5-7 years it will be much more effective. As it stands today, I think that there is still fairly large gap as evidenced mostly by people dumping on things like crowdfunding or early access because the feeling is that people are just there to cash in, like you're rolling to dough. What they don't seem to get is that the reality of the situation is that most of these developers probably don't have two nickels to rub together, let along a pool of money kicking around. I think once that misconception dies off, there can probably be more intelligent conversations on the subject of transparency.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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I was Mid, Mid, Mid! But so far I am honestly most hyped for what I see in Hibernia, which is horrible because I hate Hibbies, lol. The old classic song "Dem Hibbies" is still out there for anyone who wants to take the time to look it up and enjoy the nostalgia.
I should add I like the look of the Pict race most of all so far but not sure I can be Alb either.