Thinking these terribad releases are more like if your double cheeseburger was missing the cheese and undercooked, not just a little less visually appealing.
...continuing the analogy, because it's awesome...
Some people prefer their burgers medium rare, and other like them well done. Under cooked to one, is perfect to the other.
In this case, you're talking about a studio with a track record of under-cooking their burgers, but you're complaining they didn't tell you that yours would be the same.
It's legitimate to not really care for ATLAS because it's in a rough state. I don't think it's really fair to blame false advertising for why you bought it and didn't like it. Clearly, they didn't do a great job of managing expectations. I really don't think it was anything malicious, though. They release stuff in rough state all the time. Why would they expect they needed to tell everyone this would be along the same lines after they had the big Early Access label on it to begin with.
Again, 100% get and respect that a lot of folks don't like the game in it's current state. I just don't agree that there was any sort of conspiracy to cheat people.
I don't think it needs to be malicious to warrant protections for the consumer, though. Proving malicious intent as a prerequisite to protecting consumers is an unrealistically high bar to set. Even if a company stumbles into a scheme that harms consumers, it doesn't harm then any less because the company didn't have self-awareness.
They literally did everything they could to try and convince gamers this EA might as well be an open beta (aka the final quality check of the burger before sending it out the door). It wasn't, at all, and just because they can't he proven or weren't malicious, it doesn't mean consumers weren't still misled.
Thinking these terribad releases are more like if your double cheeseburger was missing the cheese and undercooked, not just a little less visually appealing.
...continuing the analogy, because it's awesome...
Some people prefer their burgers medium rare, and other like them well done. Under cooked to one, is perfect to the other.
In this case, you're talking about a studio with a track record of under-cooking their burgers, but you're complaining they didn't tell you that yours would be the same.
It's legitimate to not really care for ATLAS because it's in a rough state. I don't think it's really fair to blame false advertising for why you bought it and didn't like it. Clearly, they didn't do a great job of managing expectations. I really don't think it was anything malicious, though. They release stuff in rough state all the time. Why would they expect they needed to tell everyone this would be along the same lines after they had the big Early Access label on it to begin with.
Again, 100% get and respect that a lot of folks don't like the game in it's current state. I just don't agree that there was any sort of conspiracy to cheat people.
I don't think it needs to be malicious to warrant protections for the consumer, though. Proving malicious intent as a prerequisite to protecting consumers is an unrealistically high bar to set. Even if a company stumbles into a scheme that harms consumers, it doesn't harm then any less because the company didn't have self-awareness.
They literally did everything they could to try and convince gamers this EA might as well be an open beta (aka the final quality check of the burger before sending it out the door). It wasn't, at all, and just because they can't he proven or weren't malicious, it doesn't mean consumers weren't still misled.
Their marketing has some pretty classic elements of false advertising.
Cinematic and gameplay in the context of trailers means something. What they did was a bad cinematic trailer and called it gameplay.
The whole open world thing as I covered already.
These things have meaning. It doesn't have to be some written standard. It's what consumers can reasonably expect which is often judged by common industry practices.
But being games the larger public doesn't really care.
I don't think it needs to be malicious to warrant protections for the consumer, though. Proving malicious intent as a prerequisite to protecting consumers is an unrealistically high bar to set. Even if a company stumbles into a scheme that harms consumers, it doesn't harm then any less because the company didn't have self-awareness.
They literally did everything they could to try and convince gamers this EA might as well be an open beta (aka the final quality check of the burger before sending it out the door). It wasn't, at all, and just because they can't he proven or weren't malicious, it doesn't mean consumers weren't still misled.
I'm not sure I agree with that, but tabling it for a second, I'm not sure what you could really even do about it. I can't think of any rules or checks that you could put in place that wouldn't kill opportunities for indie devs to get their products out.
Even if you could, I'm not sure you should. The consumer clearly wants these products, as buggy as they are, because they keep buying them.
Best case, maybe just require games open themselves up to press/streamers prior to launching whatever random stage they declare themselves in, and then promote the outlets that ask the better questions around determining stability. Even then, I'm not real comfortable with it. As a business owner, I don't really want anyone getting between me and my consumers. Not because I don't want them protected, but because there's no way they could cover all the edge cases I'll run into. At some point, someone will get screwed because the rules prevent them from doing something the way they needed to do it.
I kind of wrap back around to this being a consumer problem. Folks are consuming too quickly for your tastes. That's a fair observation, but I don't know that anyone is in the moral right to demand, and then force, them to slow down.
I'm a free-market dude, though. At this point, it's probably more a philosophical question than anything... Those get hard.
They had most of the same streamers they gave a preview to before the first failed launch another free show tonight. And they paid them for it.
So despite all the crap that the guys who think this game is doing so great want to take away from that is they PAID guys who streamed to a little over 100K (view bots included) to play the game. By far the two largest, lirik and Shroud were out as soon as they were dead. Which for Shroud was quite awhile since he 'won'. But once it was over he was gone too. he streamed it for about 90 minutes one night and it was so bad he left. he wasnt too kind. So the check they scratched him must have been pretty big. But then again these guys are complete sell outs, but with the following and money Shroud makes you would think he could afford to not be a complete sell out, same for Lirik. But I guess they are taking what they can get when they can get it. So typical millennial thinking I suppose.
In a month there wont be anyone streaming it (other than a few RP guys on private servers) because it doesnt offer anything but a possible spot for people to RP. But so have a lot of other games that had some interest for a hot minute.
I have said it for awhile its sad these kinds of games are always developed by people who cant make them. PoTBS was a failure, its clone Naval Action isnt any better, Sea of Thieves is a joke, and now Atlas.
Maybe its the gamers I dont know. Maybe we expect too much. But no matter how awesome some of the stuff Atlas offers is it wont be possible because the engine cant handle it.
I don't think it needs to be malicious to warrant protections for the consumer, though. Proving malicious intent as a prerequisite to protecting consumers is an unrealistically high bar to set. Even if a company stumbles into a scheme that harms consumers, it doesn't harm then any less because the company didn't have self-awareness.
They literally did everything they could to try and convince gamers this EA might as well be an open beta (aka the final quality check of the burger before sending it out the door). It wasn't, at all, and just because they can't he proven or weren't malicious, it doesn't mean consumers weren't still misled.
I'm not sure I agree with that, but tabling it for a second, I'm not sure what you could really even do about it. I can't think of any rules or checks that you could put in place that wouldn't kill opportunities for indie devs to get their products out.
Even if you could, I'm not sure you should. The consumer clearly wants these products, as buggy as they are, because they keep buying them.
Best case, maybe just require games open themselves up to press/streamers prior to launching whatever random stage they declare themselves in, and then promote the outlets that ask the better questions around determining stability. Even then, I'm not real comfortable with it. As a business owner, I don't really want anyone getting between me and my consumers. Not because I don't want them protected, but because there's no way they could cover all the edge cases I'll run into. At some point, someone will get screwed because the rules prevent them from doing something the way they needed to do it.
I kind of wrap back around to this being a consumer problem. Folks are consuming too quickly for your tastes. That's a fair observation, but I don't know that anyone is in the moral right to demand, and then force, them to slow down.
I'm a free-market dude, though. At this point, it's probably more a philosophical question than anything... Those get hard.
You're right; I disagree with some of the assertions you make and concerns you raise, but I do understand where they stem from. You are very honest about your perspective, and I cannot fault anyone for looking out for their own business in that manner.
So I guess the only thing left to do here is... Grab pitchforks and torches and burn everyone who adheres to your philosophy at the stake if they won't adhere to my philosophy!
They had most of the same streamers they gave a preview to before the first failed launch another free show tonight. And they paid them for it.
So despite all the crap that the guys who think this game is doing so great want to take away from that is they PAID guys who streamed to a little over 100K (view bots included) to play the game. By far the two largest, lirik and Shroud were out as soon as they were dead. Which for Shroud was quite awhile since he 'won'. But once it was over he was gone too. he streamed it for about 90 minutes one night and it was so bad he left. he wasnt too kind. So the check they scratched him must have been pretty big. But then again these guys are complete sell outs, but with the following and money Shroud makes you would think he could afford to not be a complete sell out, same for Lirik. But I guess they are taking what they can get when they can get it. So typical millennial thinking I suppose.
In a month there wont be anyone streaming it (other than a few RP guys on private servers) because it doesnt offer anything but a possible spot for people to RP. But so have a lot of other games that had some interest for a hot minute.
I have said it for awhile its sad these kinds of games are always developed by people who cant make them. PoTBS was a failure, its clone Naval Action isnt any better, Sea of Thieves is a joke, and now Atlas.
Maybe its the gamers I dont know. Maybe we expect too much. But no matter how awesome some of the stuff Atlas offers is it wont be possible because the engine cant handle it.
Could you cite that number, please? I seriously doubt they paid anyone $100k to stream an early version of the game.
You're right; I disagree with some of the assertions you make and concerns you raise, but I do understand where they stem from. You are very honest about your perspective, and I cannot fault anyone for looking out for their own business in that manner.
So I guess the only thing left to do here is... Grab pitchforks and torches and burn everyone who adheres to your philosophy at the stake if they won't adhere to my philosophy!
I don't think it needs to be malicious to warrant protections for the consumer, though. Proving malicious intent as a prerequisite to protecting consumers is an unrealistically high bar to set. Even if a company stumbles into a scheme that harms consumers, it doesn't harm then any less because the company didn't have self-awareness.
They literally did everything they could to try and convince gamers this EA might as well be an open beta (aka the final quality check of the burger before sending it out the door). It wasn't, at all, and just because they can't he proven or weren't malicious, it doesn't mean consumers weren't still misled.
I'm not sure I agree with that, but tabling it for a second, I'm not sure what you could really even do about it. I can't think of any rules or checks that you could put in place that wouldn't kill opportunities for indie devs to get their products out.
Even if you could, I'm not sure you should. The consumer clearly wants these products, as buggy as they are, because they keep buying them.
Best case, maybe just require games open themselves up to press/streamers prior to launching whatever random stage they declare themselves in, and then promote the outlets that ask the better questions around determining stability. Even then, I'm not real comfortable with it. As a business owner, I don't really want anyone getting between me and my consumers. Not because I don't want them protected, but because there's no way they could cover all the edge cases I'll run into. At some point, someone will get screwed because the rules prevent them from doing something the way they needed to do it.
I kind of wrap back around to this being a consumer problem. Folks are consuming too quickly for your tastes. That's a fair observation, but I don't know that anyone is in the moral right to demand, and then force, them to slow down.
I'm a free-market dude, though. At this point, it's probably more a philosophical question than anything... Those get hard.
I say just hold people accountable for delivering what they sell. I’m fine with an Early Access game if people want to buy it. Where IMHO these guys went off the rails was their statements about the condition of the game. If you are going to play the early access card you should not be saying stuff like the below. It just sets expectations to be high when they should be low.
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“Everything in the features section will be there around Early Access Launch and the game will be an unparalleled massively multiplayer experience from Day One.”
And before ore anyone wants to argue about what is and isn’t there, no better than Bill posted that it wasn’t. And he’s not exactly known for flame throwing.
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
They had most of the same streamers they gave a preview to before the first failed launch another free show tonight. And they paid them for it.
So despite all the crap that the guys who think this game is doing so great want to take away from that is they PAID guys who streamed to a little over 100K (view bots included) to play the game. By far the two largest, lirik and Shroud were out as soon as they were dead. Which for Shroud was quite awhile since he 'won'. But once it was over he was gone too. he streamed it for about 90 minutes one night and it was so bad he left. he wasnt too kind. So the check they scratched him must have been pretty big. But then again these guys are complete sell outs, but with the following and money Shroud makes you would think he could afford to not be a complete sell out, same for Lirik. But I guess they are taking what they can get when they can get it. So typical millennial thinking I suppose.
In a month there wont be anyone streaming it (other than a few RP guys on private servers) because it doesnt offer anything but a possible spot for people to RP. But so have a lot of other games that had some interest for a hot minute.
I have said it for awhile its sad these kinds of games are always developed by people who cant make them. PoTBS was a failure, its clone Naval Action isnt any better, Sea of Thieves is a joke, and now Atlas.
Maybe its the gamers I dont know. Maybe we expect too much. But no matter how awesome some of the stuff Atlas offers is it wont be possible because the engine cant handle it.
Could you cite that number, please? I seriously doubt they paid anyone $100k to stream an early version of the game.
LOL for a guy who writes for this place or is at least a contributor youre reading skills arent the best or at least comprehension. I never said they paid people 100K. I said they had 100K people on twitch watching it and the biggest numbers were coming from people they paid to stream it.
They paid them for the event when it happened and they also have a few on 'retainer' I guess as there continue to be sponsored streams ongoing. A few guys admitted it and said they play it anyway so why not take some money. Which is no big deal. If they like it and have fun sure. But guys who hate it and bash it and ONLY stream it when theyre getting paid is a little much especially for guys making six figures a year playing video game (maybe thats why they make six figures).
Ok, just forget it man. You are stuck on taking this as a personal attack which it wasn't. I was commenting on your post, not your review. You said people don't have to get paid to have a different opinion than someone else. I replied by saying and they don't have to get paid to be a brown nose either. There are people who give slanted reviews in the hopes of future benefits.
No, I'm hung up on the fact that what you're saying makes no sense. Personal or not, you're saying people softball articles because of some future benefit, but you have yet to say what that benefit is... Every post has contained precisely the same question: WHAT benefit?
The Illuminati doesn't show up at anyone's door years after writing an article and present them with their special benefit. I've never heard of any publishers sending anyone a financial thank you in the mail because they wrote a flattering piece unasked.
What sorts of benefits do you think people are getting for their ad hoc brown-nosing?
rodarin said:LOL for a guy who writes for this place or is at least a contributor youre reading skills arent the best or at least comprehension. I never said they paid people 100K. I said they had 100K people on twitch watching it and the biggest numbers were coming from people they paid to stream it.
They paid them for the event when it happened and they also have a few on 'retainer' I guess as there continue to be sponsored streams ongoing. A few guys admitted it and said they play it anyway so why not take some money. Which is no big deal. If they like it and have fun sure. But guys who hate it and bash it and ONLY stream it when theyre getting paid is a little much especially for guys making six figures a year playing video game (maybe thats why they make six figures).
Ah! No, you're right. I did misread that. I thought you said "they PAID guys who streamed a little over 100K" and missed the "to" in that.
Disregard. I wondered if you'd seen it somewhere, because $100k to stream from a studio that small didn't sound very likely. It was oddly specific (had it been $100k and not 100k ppl), so I didn't think you were just throwing a random number out there.
No I meant bigoted, feel free to add hypocritical into the mix though if you wish, that probably applies too.
My mistake. What you described was notionally hypocritical. I'm not sure where the bigoted part could come in from the scenario as you laid it out, but I'll take your word for it.
Of course, you didn't really make a case of hypocritical, either.
Guys, maybe you should stop raking Red over the coals. You might disagree with him and he can be a bit blunt and uncompromising but each of you giving him a hard time have displayed exactly that type of behaviour yourselves in other threads and thought it was perfectly ok back there. Give a guy a break, you don’t agree, so what?
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
rodarin said:LOL for a guy who writes for this place or is at least a contributor youre reading skills arent the best or at least comprehension. I never said they paid people 100K. I said they had 100K people on twitch watching it and the biggest numbers were coming from people they paid to stream it.
They paid them for the event when it happened and they also have a few on 'retainer' I guess as there continue to be sponsored streams ongoing. A few guys admitted it and said they play it anyway so why not take some money. Which is no big deal. If they like it and have fun sure. But guys who hate it and bash it and ONLY stream it when theyre getting paid is a little much especially for guys making six figures a year playing video game (maybe thats why they make six figures).
Ah! No, you're right. I did misread that. I thought you said "they PAID guys who streamed a little over 100K" and missed the "to" in that.
Disregard. I wondered if you'd seen it somewhere, because $100k to stream from a studio that small didn't sound very likely. It was oddly specific (had it been $100k and not 100k ppl), so I didn't think you were just throwing a random number out there.
If the game was as good as the trailer they wouldnt need to pay anyone.
Now that people have a lot of ships and everyone is getting mega crews the lag in the whole game (not even relegated to individual servers) is unreal. But obviously worse around the high texture areas.
Suffering from the same code issues (along with unreal engine being ass) is really coming to the fore.
I am sure it will all be sold as them lowering server resources and 'stress testing' before this wipe. (which still hasnt been announced officially) but is probable. But there are also the conspiracies that this is what they did in ARK where they lagged the servers to dupe items.(which did happen in ARK). There has been worsening lag over the past 3 days so if it is the ARK dupe 'trick' then these guys rally havent learned anything.
Its one of those things where you wish it would work but you know it wont. Mega guilds and alliances (no matter where theyre from) claiming massive areas of the map. So any random groups of even up to 100 players would still have difficulty being independent. So what happens is an homogenization of all the groups who are too afraid to fight or cant fight into the alliance of the mega companies. So eventually its either no PvP or just two or 3 mega companies so far away from each other they dont want to fight anyway. And thats really the 'best' case scenario.
But like all the other 'survival' open world building type games once you have it all built and found there isnt anything to do either. Other than PvP. (see above)
There is apparently a hard cap of 600 in a company (too many) but with alliances and subsidiaries its unlimited basically. If it does survive the initial surge they will need to cap alliance numbers too I think, then it might make that single hurdle.
Until they figure out lag (which they never did with ARK) that is a secondary issue. You can show all the cool PvP and PvE encounters all you want but when you have 30-40 guys on a galleon and theyre rubber banding all over the place and the ocean looks likes some bad 'scratching' sequence form a horrible 90s movie it wont matter.
So, you've never heard of the term brown-noser? Because that is basically what you are telling me. The "benefits" could be anything from future sneak peaks, limited access to future developments, other similar shill work or even sponsorship. It doesn't even have to be with this developer. When someone gives positive reviews all the time, I generally view them as brown-nosers of the industry for exactly that reason. I still think someone who think he's as smart as you claim to be, you sure like to play stupid.
If you truly don't understand what it means to be a brown-noser, try googling sychophant instead.
I know what brown nosing is. I've rephrased it and used synonyms several times while trying to get you to tell me what these benefits are that you're talking about.
So, you're saying that this hypothetical brown-nosers are intentionally misleading their readership for free, so that they might at some later date get access at a later date that they wouldn't have had?
That's not really how this works. PR is typically handled by outsourced firms who have huge lists of all the streamers and media they work with. When they have a new product, they send a blast, and we sign up for keys. They give them out until they've reached their quota. They do reach out to specific big names in order to get them to feature their product, but those big names are all going to be streamers these days, not writers. They don't even read most of the stuff, if any of it, that we write, and they're certainly not going to undertake the expense of actually trying to track who gives them good reviews and who doesn't. Besides, bad reviews are great press, so they don't really care about that, either.
w/r to writing positively, that's me. I try really hard to only write positively. Frankly, I do it because it's harder. It's really easy to crap all over a game and point out the mistakes. Doesn't take much in the way of brain power. On the other-hand, it does take a lot of effort to look for things that were done well in a game you don't particularly like. If I think a product is trash, I just don't write about it. That's why you don't see me doing any Star Citizen articles anymore. They'd be easy to do and would get a lot of views, but meh. I'm not doing this to make money. I actually lose money on every article I write. I do it because it's fun and I enjoy learning about the business of building games.
I'm not pretending to be stupid. You just don't know what you're talking about. Then, when you got called on it, you started intentionally ignoring the relevant question because you didn't have an answer.
There is no secret review mafia making sure certain people are in the club and others are out. It's too large an industry for that these days. Unless you're talking about someone like Ninja or another big streamer, they really don't know or care who we are.
Guys, maybe you should stop raking Red over the coals. You might disagree with him and he can be a bit blunt and uncompromising but each of you giving him a hard time have displayed exactly that type of behaviour yourselves in other threads and thought it was perfectly ok back there. Give a guy a break, you don’t agree, so what?
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Thanks, but don't sweat it. They're just words and do no damage.
...besides, every click is good for the site and ups my article view count.
If the game was as good as the trailer they wouldnt need to pay anyone.
Now that people have a lot of ships and everyone is getting mega crews the lag in the whole game (not even relegated to individual servers) is unreal. But obviously worse around the high texture areas.
Suffering from the same code issues (along with unreal engine being ass) is really coming to the fore.
I am sure it will all be sold as them lowering server resources and 'stress testing' before this wipe. (which still hasnt been announced officially) but is probable. But there are also the conspiracies that this is what they did in ARK where they lagged the servers to dupe items.(which did happen in ARK). There has been worsening lag over the past 3 days so if it is the ARK dupe 'trick' then these guys rally havent learned anything.
Its one of those things where you wish it would work but you know it wont. Mega guilds and alliances (no matter where theyre from) claiming massive areas of the map. So any random groups of even up to 100 players would still have difficulty being independent. So what happens is an homogenization of all the groups who are too afraid to fight or cant fight into the alliance of the mega companies. So eventually its either no PvP or just two or 3 mega companies so far away from each other they dont want to fight anyway. And thats really the 'best' case scenario.
But like all the other 'survival' open world building type games once you have it all built and found there isnt anything to do either. Other than PvP. (see above)
There is apparently a hard cap of 600 in a company (too many) but with alliances and subsidiaries its unlimited basically. If it does survive the initial surge they will need to cap alliance numbers too I think, then it might make that single hurdle.
Until they figure out lag (which they never did with ARK) that is a secondary issue. You can show all the cool PvP and PvE encounters all you want but when you have 30-40 guys on a galleon and theyre rubber banding all over the place and the ocean looks likes some bad 'scratching' sequence form a horrible 90s movie it wont matter.
That's partly true, but not totally. It's not uncommon for publishers to pay for coverage in some form. Obviously, it's better if they don't and I don't know that any do it on websites anymore.
With streamers, they have a ton of games that get consistent views. If you want them to try something new and ensure they do it, compensation is a good way to do that. It's basically buying an ad.
All those complaints are legitimate complaints. Some of them even touch on some of the issues I had with the game. Keep in mind, the article wasn't saying the game was great or even that anyone should buy it, but just pointing out that a lot of the negativity that was being passed around was just no longer true.
This week's article will be about another game that I hated when it came out and have taken another look at it. Some of my complaints in that case are no longer true, as well.
Interesting excerpt here from a post by a Server Hosting company (G-Portal)
We are very sorry to all of our customers who are having massive problems with their ATLAS servers. ATLAS is in a much earlier state of development than we at GPORTAL anticipated (led to believe) and were unable to forsee the issues it would cause.
The founders as well as the entire GPORTAL team give our sincerest apologies.
Let me sum up the last few days: as we all noticed, the ATLAS release was postponed several times until the 23th of December. The server files weren’t available from the start, but after a lot of talks, we finally received them, directly from the developer a few hours later.
ATLAS doesn't work like a typical game; this isn't like our normal services, where the servers are ready upon immediate purchase and start up. ATLAS has many special needs like decentralized databases, and fully automated management of JSON files. There is NO standard map and the large clusters of the MMO Officials aren't usable for private servers (and believe me, there are tons more issues).
Interesting excerpt here from a post by a Server Hosting company (G-Portal)
We are very sorry to all of our customers who are having massive problems with their ATLAS servers. ATLAS is in a much earlier state of development than we at GPORTAL anticipated (led to believe) and were unable to forsee the issues it would cause.
The founders as well as the entire GPORTAL team give our sincerest apologies.
Let me sum up the last few days: as we all noticed, the ATLAS release was postponed several times until the 23th of December. The server files weren’t available from the start, but after a lot of talks, we finally received them, directly from the developer a few hours later.
ATLAS doesn't work like a typical game; this isn't like our normal services, where the servers are ready upon immediate purchase and start up. ATLAS has many special needs like decentralized databases, and fully automated management of JSON files. There is NO standard map and the large clusters of the MMO Officials aren't usable for private servers (and believe me, there are tons more issues).
I am starting to feel any semblance of "MMORPG" will never materialize for Atlas. Private servers have shown a much more stable experience, and if even those are presenting the server providers with huge issues due to the state of the game and, specifically it seems, the game's netcode, I don't see the official servers ever handling anything resembling a massive naval or land battle between players.
Interesting excerpt here from a post by a Server Hosting company (G-Portal)
We are very sorry to all of our customers who are having massive problems with their ATLAS servers. ATLAS is in a much earlier state of development than we at GPORTAL anticipated (led to believe) and were unable to forsee the issues it would cause.
The founders as well as the entire GPORTAL team give our sincerest apologies.
Let me sum up the last few days: as we all noticed, the ATLAS release was postponed several times until the 23th of December. The server files weren’t available from the start, but after a lot of talks, we finally received them, directly from the developer a few hours later.
ATLAS doesn't work like a typical game; this isn't like our normal services, where the servers are ready upon immediate purchase and start up. ATLAS has many special needs like decentralized databases, and fully automated management of JSON files. There is NO standard map and the large clusters of the MMO Officials aren't usable for private servers (and believe me, there are tons more issues).
I am starting to feel any semblance of "MMORPG" will never materialize for Atlas. Private servers have shown a much more stable experience, and if even those are presenting the server providers with huge issues due to the state of the game and, specifically it seems, the game's netcode, I don't see the official servers ever handling anything resembling a massive naval or land battle between players.
My group will eventually give it a try and get a private server but the costs are insane right now. This is because you need to add extra servers... I am not even sure how many would be needed.
Check out the prices from Nitrado (the official hosting company)
Interesting excerpt here from a post by a Server Hosting company (G-Portal)
We are very sorry to all of our customers who are having massive problems with their ATLAS servers. ATLAS is in a much earlier state of development than we at GPORTAL anticipated (led to believe) and were unable to forsee the issues it would cause.
The founders as well as the entire GPORTAL team give our sincerest apologies.
Let me sum up the last few days: as we all noticed, the ATLAS release was postponed several times until the 23th of December. The server files weren’t available from the start, but after a lot of talks, we finally received them, directly from the developer a few hours later.
ATLAS doesn't work like a typical game; this isn't like our normal services, where the servers are ready upon immediate purchase and start up. ATLAS has many special needs like decentralized databases, and fully automated management of JSON files. There is NO standard map and the large clusters of the MMO Officials aren't usable for private servers (and believe me, there are tons more issues).
I am starting to feel any semblance of "MMORPG" will never materialize for Atlas. Private servers have shown a much more stable experience, and if even those are presenting the server providers with huge issues due to the state of the game and, specifically it seems, the game's netcode, I don't see the official servers ever handling anything resembling a massive naval or land battle between players.
My group will eventually give it a try and get a private server but the costs are insane right now. This is because you need to add extra servers... I am not even sure how many would be needed.
Check out the prices from Nitrado (the official hosting company)
$93/mo for 14 players on 6 servers... $52/mo for 10 players on 4 servers...
Damn...
The streamers I watched said you'd have to mimic the dev's setup to get a private server with the official world.. meaning dozens and dozens of servers. I can't believe they wpuld add private server support with such a requirement to enjoy more than a tiny subsection of the overall "official" map.
Interesting excerpt here from a post by a Server Hosting company (G-Portal)
We are very sorry to all of our customers who are having massive problems with their ATLAS servers. ATLAS is in a much earlier state of development than we at GPORTAL anticipated (led to believe) and were unable to forsee the issues it would cause.
The founders as well as the entire GPORTAL team give our sincerest apologies.
Let me sum up the last few days: as we all noticed, the ATLAS release was postponed several times until the 23th of December. The server files weren’t available from the start, but after a lot of talks, we finally received them, directly from the developer a few hours later.
ATLAS doesn't work like a typical game; this isn't like our normal services, where the servers are ready upon immediate purchase and start up. ATLAS has many special needs like decentralized databases, and fully automated management of JSON files. There is NO standard map and the large clusters of the MMO Officials aren't usable for private servers (and believe me, there are tons more issues).
I am starting to feel any semblance of "MMORPG" will never materialize for Atlas. Private servers have shown a much more stable experience, and if even those are presenting the server providers with huge issues due to the state of the game and, specifically it seems, the game's netcode, I don't see the official servers ever handling anything resembling a massive naval or land battle between players.
My group will eventually give it a try and get a private server but the costs are insane right now. This is because you need to add extra servers... I am not even sure how many would be needed.
Check out the prices from Nitrado (the official hosting company)
$93/mo for 14 players on 6 servers... $52/mo for 10 players on 4 servers...
Damn...
The streamers I watched said you'd have to mimic the dev's setup to get a private server with the official world.. meaning dozens and dozens of servers.
Any idea how big of an area 1 server makes? I mean... those prices are scary.
Just for giggles, I punched in for a 42 person setup with 16 servers (assuming if they recommend 6 for 14...). It came out to $676/mo!!!
Holy cannoli Batman!
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
Interesting excerpt here from a post by a Server Hosting company (G-Portal)
We are very sorry to all of our customers who are having massive problems with their ATLAS servers. ATLAS is in a much earlier state of development than we at GPORTAL anticipated (led to believe) and were unable to forsee the issues it would cause.
The founders as well as the entire GPORTAL team give our sincerest apologies.
Let me sum up the last few days: as we all noticed, the ATLAS release was postponed several times until the 23th of December. The server files weren’t available from the start, but after a lot of talks, we finally received them, directly from the developer a few hours later.
ATLAS doesn't work like a typical game; this isn't like our normal services, where the servers are ready upon immediate purchase and start up. ATLAS has many special needs like decentralized databases, and fully automated management of JSON files. There is NO standard map and the large clusters of the MMO Officials aren't usable for private servers (and believe me, there are tons more issues).
I am starting to feel any semblance of "MMORPG" will never materialize for Atlas. Private servers have shown a much more stable experience, and if even those are presenting the server providers with huge issues due to the state of the game and, specifically it seems, the game's netcode, I don't see the official servers ever handling anything resembling a massive naval or land battle between players.
My group will eventually give it a try and get a private server but the costs are insane right now. This is because you need to add extra servers... I am not even sure how many would be needed.
Check out the prices from Nitrado (the official hosting company)
$93/mo for 14 players on 6 servers... $52/mo for 10 players on 4 servers...
Damn...
The streamers I watched said you'd have to mimic the dev's setup to get a private server with the official world.. meaning dozens and dozens of servers.
Any idea how big of an area 1 server makes? I mean... those prices are scary.
Just for giggles, I punched in for a 42 person setup with 16 servers (assuming if they recommend 6 for 14...). It came out to $676/mo!!!
Holy cannoli Batman!
I don't know, they didn't mention. All they mentioned was that they only ran a small portion of the map because running a larger version required a prohibitively expensive number of servers. And these guys had what appeared to be a guild's worth of folks on their private server, not just a group of 5-6 friends. I don't know how many helped to pay for the server, but it honestly seemed like running a private server with the full official map would be unrealistically expensive even for relatively large groups of players in a game like this.
Interesting excerpt here from a post by a Server Hosting company (G-Portal)
We are very sorry to all of our customers who are having massive problems with their ATLAS servers. ATLAS is in a much earlier state of development than we at GPORTAL anticipated (led to believe) and were unable to forsee the issues it would cause.
The founders as well as the entire GPORTAL team give our sincerest apologies.
Let me sum up the last few days: as we all noticed, the ATLAS release was postponed several times until the 23th of December. The server files weren’t available from the start, but after a lot of talks, we finally received them, directly from the developer a few hours later.
ATLAS doesn't work like a typical game; this isn't like our normal services, where the servers are ready upon immediate purchase and start up. ATLAS has many special needs like decentralized databases, and fully automated management of JSON files. There is NO standard map and the large clusters of the MMO Officials aren't usable for private servers (and believe me, there are tons more issues).
I am starting to feel any semblance of "MMORPG" will never materialize for Atlas. Private servers have shown a much more stable experience, and if even those are presenting the server providers with huge issues due to the state of the game and, specifically it seems, the game's netcode, I don't see the official servers ever handling anything resembling a massive naval or land battle between players.
My group will eventually give it a try and get a private server but the costs are insane right now. This is because you need to add extra servers... I am not even sure how many would be needed.
Check out the prices from Nitrado (the official hosting company)
$93/mo for 14 players on 6 servers... $52/mo for 10 players on 4 servers...
Damn...
The streamers I watched said you'd have to mimic the dev's setup to get a private server with the official world.. meaning dozens and dozens of servers.
Any idea how big of an area 1 server makes? I mean... those prices are scary.
Just for giggles, I punched in for a 42 person setup with 16 servers (assuming if they recommend 6 for 14...). It came out to $676/mo!!!
Holy cannoli Batman!
I don't know, they didn't mention. All they mentioned was that they only ran a small portion of the map because running a larger version required a prohibitively expensive number of servers. And these guys had what appeared to be a guild's worth of folks on their private server, not just a group of 5-6 friends. I don't know how many helped to pay for the server, but it honestly seemed like running a private server with the full official map would be unrealistically expensive even for relatively large groups of players in a game like this.
Yeah it would be unrealistic to try and run the official map setup on a private server. And I doubt you would ever have the player base to fill up such a unofficial server.
But the nice thing about unofficial servers is that its super easy to create your own map with the different islands. You can increase the size of a map and add as many islands as you want to it. The tools that have been developed so far make it really easy to drag and drop islands onto the map generator and you can have any type of layout you want.
Renting from these providers is also a crap shoot. Your best bet is just to get a $100 or so dedicated server with 32 gigs of ram and you can easily run 4 to 6 zone servers on that. Each zone I recommend between 4 and 8 gigs of ram. CPU usage is not really all that high. Its more all about having enough ram for the server. Bandwidth is really low for the game so there is really no need for a massive pipeline.
Interesting excerpt here from a post by a Server Hosting company (G-Portal)
We are very sorry to all of our customers who are having massive problems with their ATLAS servers. ATLAS is in a much earlier state of development than we at GPORTAL anticipated (led to believe) and were unable to forsee the issues it would cause.
The founders as well as the entire GPORTAL team give our sincerest apologies.
Let me sum up the last few days: as we all noticed, the ATLAS release was postponed several times until the 23th of December. The server files weren’t available from the start, but after a lot of talks, we finally received them, directly from the developer a few hours later.
ATLAS doesn't work like a typical game; this isn't like our normal services, where the servers are ready upon immediate purchase and start up. ATLAS has many special needs like decentralized databases, and fully automated management of JSON files. There is NO standard map and the large clusters of the MMO Officials aren't usable for private servers (and believe me, there are tons more issues).
I am starting to feel any semblance of "MMORPG" will never materialize for Atlas. Private servers have shown a much more stable experience, and if even those are presenting the server providers with huge issues due to the state of the game and, specifically it seems, the game's netcode, I don't see the official servers ever handling anything resembling a massive naval or land battle between players.
My group will eventually give it a try and get a private server but the costs are insane right now. This is because you need to add extra servers... I am not even sure how many would be needed.
Check out the prices from Nitrado (the official hosting company)
$93/mo for 14 players on 6 servers... $52/mo for 10 players on 4 servers...
Damn...
The streamers I watched said you'd have to mimic the dev's setup to get a private server with the official world.. meaning dozens and dozens of servers.
Any idea how big of an area 1 server makes? I mean... those prices are scary.
Just for giggles, I punched in for a 42 person setup with 16 servers (assuming if they recommend 6 for 14...). It came out to $676/mo!!!
Holy cannoli Batman!
I don't know, they didn't mention. All they mentioned was that they only ran a small portion of the map because running a larger version required a prohibitively expensive number of servers. And these guys had what appeared to be a guild's worth of folks on their private server, not just a group of 5-6 friends. I don't know how many helped to pay for the server, but it honestly seemed like running a private server with the full official map would be unrealistically expensive even for relatively large groups of players in a game like this.
Yeah it would be unrealistic to try and run the official map setup on a private server. And I doubt you would ever have the player base to fill up such a unofficial server.
But the nice thing about unofficial servers is that its super easy to create your own map with the different islands. You can increase the size of a map and add as many islands as you want to it. The tools that have been developed so far make it really easy to drag and drop islands onto the map generator and you can have any type of layout you want.
Renting from these providers is also a crap shoot. Your best bet is just to get a $100 or so dedicated server with 32 gigs of ram and you can easily run 4 to 6 zone servers on that. Each zone I recommend between 4 and 8 gigs of ram. CPU usage is not really all that high. Its more all about having enough ram for the server. Bandwidth is really low for the game so there is really no need for a massive pipeline.
How much area is one server? Compared to say... Dark and Light
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
Comments
They literally did everything they could to try and convince gamers this EA might as well be an open beta (aka the final quality check of the burger before sending it out the door). It wasn't, at all, and just because they can't he proven or weren't malicious, it doesn't mean consumers weren't still misled.
Their marketing has some pretty classic elements of false advertising.
Cinematic and gameplay in the context of trailers means something. What they did was a bad cinematic trailer and called it gameplay.
The whole open world thing as I covered already.
These things have meaning. It doesn't have to be some written standard. It's what consumers can reasonably expect which is often judged by common industry practices.
But being games the larger public doesn't really care.
Even if you could, I'm not sure you should. The consumer clearly wants these products, as buggy as they are, because they keep buying them.
Best case, maybe just require games open themselves up to press/streamers prior to launching whatever random stage they declare themselves in, and then promote the outlets that ask the better questions around determining stability. Even then, I'm not real comfortable with it. As a business owner, I don't really want anyone getting between me and my consumers. Not because I don't want them protected, but because there's no way they could cover all the edge cases I'll run into. At some point, someone will get screwed because the rules prevent them from doing something the way they needed to do it.
I kind of wrap back around to this being a consumer problem. Folks are consuming too quickly for your tastes. That's a fair observation, but I don't know that anyone is in the moral right to demand, and then force, them to slow down.
I'm a free-market dude, though. At this point, it's probably more a philosophical question than anything... Those get hard.
So despite all the crap that the guys who think this game is doing so great want to take away from that is they PAID guys who streamed to a little over 100K (view bots included) to play the game. By far the two largest, lirik and Shroud were out as soon as they were dead. Which for Shroud was quite awhile since he 'won'. But once it was over he was gone too. he streamed it for about 90 minutes one night and it was so bad he left. he wasnt too kind. So the check they scratched him must have been pretty big. But then again these guys are complete sell outs, but with the following and money Shroud makes you would think he could afford to not be a complete sell out, same for Lirik. But I guess they are taking what they can get when they can get it. So typical millennial thinking I suppose.
In a month there wont be anyone streaming it (other than a few RP guys on private servers) because it doesnt offer anything but a possible spot for people to RP. But so have a lot of other games that had some interest for a hot minute.
I have said it for awhile its sad these kinds of games are always developed by people who cant make them. PoTBS was a failure, its clone Naval Action isnt any better, Sea of Thieves is a joke, and now Atlas.
Maybe its the gamers I dont know. Maybe we expect too much. But no matter how awesome some of the stuff Atlas offers is it wont be possible because the engine cant handle it.
So I guess the only thing left to do here is... Grab pitchforks and torches and burn everyone who adheres to your philosophy at the stake if they won't adhere to my philosophy!
Burner 'er! She's a witch!
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“Everything in the features section will be there around Early Access Launch and the game will be an unparalleled massively multiplayer experience from Day One.”And before ore anyone wants to argue about what is and isn’t there, no better than Bill posted that it wasn’t. And he’s not exactly known for flame throwing.
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
They paid them for the event when it happened and they also have a few on 'retainer' I guess as there continue to be sponsored streams ongoing. A few guys admitted it and said they play it anyway so why not take some money. Which is no big deal. If they like it and have fun sure. But guys who hate it and bash it and ONLY stream it when theyre getting paid is a little much especially for guys making six figures a year playing video game (maybe thats why they make six figures).
The Illuminati doesn't show up at anyone's door years after writing an article and present them with their special benefit. I've never heard of any publishers sending anyone a financial thank you in the mail because they wrote a flattering piece unasked.
What sorts of benefits do you think people are getting for their ad hoc brown-nosing?
Disregard. I wondered if you'd seen it somewhere, because $100k to stream from a studio that small didn't sound very likely. It was oddly specific (had it been $100k and not 100k ppl), so I didn't think you were just throwing a random number out there.
Of course, you didn't really make a case of hypocritical, either.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Now that people have a lot of ships and everyone is getting mega crews the lag in the whole game (not even relegated to individual servers) is unreal. But obviously worse around the high texture areas.
Suffering from the same code issues (along with unreal engine being ass) is really coming to the fore.
I am sure it will all be sold as them lowering server resources and 'stress testing' before this wipe. (which still hasnt been announced officially) but is probable. But there are also the conspiracies that this is what they did in ARK where they lagged the servers to dupe items.(which did happen in ARK). There has been worsening lag over the past 3 days so if it is the ARK dupe 'trick' then these guys rally havent learned anything.
Its one of those things where you wish it would work but you know it wont. Mega guilds and alliances (no matter where theyre from) claiming massive areas of the map. So any random groups of even up to 100 players would still have difficulty being independent. So what happens is an homogenization of all the groups who are too afraid to fight or cant fight into the alliance of the mega companies. So eventually its either no PvP or just two or 3 mega companies so far away from each other they dont want to fight anyway. And thats really the 'best' case scenario.
But like all the other 'survival' open world building type games once you have it all built and found there isnt anything to do either. Other than PvP. (see above)
There is apparently a hard cap of 600 in a company (too many) but with alliances and subsidiaries its unlimited basically. If it does survive the initial surge they will need to cap alliance numbers too I think, then it might make that single hurdle.
Until they figure out lag (which they never did with ARK) that is a secondary issue. You can show all the cool PvP and PvE encounters all you want but when you have 30-40 guys on a galleon and theyre rubber banding all over the place and the ocean looks likes some bad 'scratching' sequence form a horrible 90s movie it wont matter.
So, you're saying that this hypothetical brown-nosers are intentionally misleading their readership for free, so that they might at some later date get access at a later date that they wouldn't have had?
That's not really how this works. PR is typically handled by outsourced firms who have huge lists of all the streamers and media they work with. When they have a new product, they send a blast, and we sign up for keys. They give them out until they've reached their quota. They do reach out to specific big names in order to get them to feature their product, but those big names are all going to be streamers these days, not writers. They don't even read most of the stuff, if any of it, that we write, and they're certainly not going to undertake the expense of actually trying to track who gives them good reviews and who doesn't. Besides, bad reviews are great press, so they don't really care about that, either.
w/r to writing positively, that's me. I try really hard to only write positively. Frankly, I do it because it's harder. It's really easy to crap all over a game and point out the mistakes. Doesn't take much in the way of brain power. On the other-hand, it does take a lot of effort to look for things that were done well in a game you don't particularly like. If I think a product is trash, I just don't write about it. That's why you don't see me doing any Star Citizen articles anymore. They'd be easy to do and would get a lot of views, but meh. I'm not doing this to make money. I actually lose money on every article I write. I do it because it's fun and I enjoy learning about the business of building games.
I'm not pretending to be stupid. You just don't know what you're talking about. Then, when you got called on it, you started intentionally ignoring the relevant question because you didn't have an answer.
There is no secret review mafia making sure certain people are in the club and others are out. It's too large an industry for that these days. Unless you're talking about someone like Ninja or another big streamer, they really don't know or care who we are.
...besides, every click is good for the site and ups my article view count.
With streamers, they have a ton of games that get consistent views. If you want them to try something new and ensure they do it, compensation is a good way to do that. It's basically buying an ad.
All those complaints are legitimate complaints. Some of them even touch on some of the issues I had with the game. Keep in mind, the article wasn't saying the game was great or even that anyone should buy it, but just pointing out that a lot of the negativity that was being passed around was just no longer true.
This week's article will be about another game that I hated when it came out and have taken another look at it. Some of my complaints in that case are no longer true, as well.
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
Check out the prices from Nitrado (the official hosting company)
https://server.nitrado.net/usa/offers/atlas
$93/mo for 14 players on 6 servers...
$52/mo for 10 players on 4 servers...
Damn...
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
Just for giggles, I punched in for a 42 person setup with 16 servers (assuming if they recommend 6 for 14...). It came out to $676/mo!!!
Holy cannoli Batman!
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
But the nice thing about unofficial servers is that its super easy to create your own map with the different islands. You can increase the size of a map and add as many islands as you want to it. The tools that have been developed so far make it really easy to drag and drop islands onto the map generator and you can have any type of layout you want.
Renting from these providers is also a crap shoot. Your best bet is just to get a $100 or so dedicated server with 32 gigs of ram and you can easily run 4 to 6 zone servers on that. Each zone I recommend between 4 and 8 gigs of ram. CPU usage is not really all that high. Its more all about having enough ram for the server. Bandwidth is really low for the game so there is really no need for a massive pipeline.
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