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How are things looking?
daveospice
Member UncommonPosts: 366
in Roma Victor
In the grand scheme of things, how is this game looking?
I saw huge problems in the design of this game during beta, and never really looked back other than to "hope" that they might pull it together.
Is it worth investing into the future of this game, considering it's taken them like 5-6 years to get where they are, and new exciting games will probably come out before this game is any good (in 2 years or more)?
I saw huge problems in the design of this game during beta, and never really looked back other than to "hope" that they might pull it together.
Is it worth investing into the future of this game, considering it's taken them like 5-6 years to get where they are, and new exciting games will probably come out before this game is any good (in 2 years or more)?
Comments
Daveospice, I've enjoyed playing computer games since I was a teenager, so it may just be that I'm all gamed out, but the grand scheme of things for me is that there is still no other MMOG with the vision and direction that Roma Victor has right now and as a result it's the only game worthwhile for me to play. And, I doubt that will change in the near future - the game is just so much different from other popular MMOGs talked about on this site. Mainly, it's the historical authenticity, iron-age theme and virtual world aspect that I appreciate in this MMOG - I've had my fill of sci-fi and fantasy.
However, the game still is like a beta and development and communication was very slow over the holidays. They have been developing the game for about six years now - everyone just hopes they can eventually pull it off before something happens that causes them to give up. So, nothing has changed as far as the outlook.
With that said, we just got a couple of updates yesturday and over the past week, including skin tones, a graphical transaprency update which was not posted, and a few fixes, but many are looking forward for the bigger updates before playing regularly:
RedBedlam
Joined: 01 Mar 2004
Posts: 333
Location: RedBedlam
This will make tracing unwanted disconnections easier. If you suffer from frequent disconnections due to the server, please report the reason given in the chatbox.
RedBedlam
Joined: 01 Mar 2004
Posts: 333
Location: RedBedlam
RedBedlam
Joined: 01 Mar 2004
Posts: 333
Location: RedBedlam
- Added /myskinpaler and /myskindarker
You now have the opportunity to change your character's skin tone until midnight GMT 1st March 2007. After this time your skin tone will be permenantly set to the last tone you changed your skin to.If you wish to have a different skin tone after 1st March 2007 you will have to restart and make a new character with a different skin tone.
The two commands adjust your skin tone to be paler or darker then they currently are. There is currently ten different skin tone settings.
RedBedlam
Joined: 18 Jul 2001
Posts: 5306
Location: RedBedlam
-KFR
Much bigger update today:
RedBedlam
Joined: 18 Jul 2001
Posts: 5318
Location: RedBedlam
v1.5.1
- Action bar action added for /track
- Fix for login-related crashes and stalls
- Added ability to log out without fully exiting
- Held equipment is now selectable/targettable as with body parts - so shield size is now more relevant
- A problem with body part selection in combat fixed
- Tree collision radii adjusted
- Minor changes to tree system in order to enable ground effects
- Ground effects
- New private trade and private trade cash panels
- Chat history scrolling reinstated
- Problems with inventory positions, missing & duplicate item icons fixed
- Theme fading problem fixed
- "Invisible fire" bug fixed
- Windows cursor renders correctly over title bar and turns on and off properly in windowed mode
- NHC collision removed - characters can no longer get 'stuck' inside an animal
- Trees and ground effects are culled when intersecting large objects
- Problem with sounds playing from adjacent boards fixed
- Some broken/missing object descriptions fixed
- Other minor fixes
We've tested most of this stuff pretty thoroughly but some of it is not final, or at least not necessarily how we're going to leave things. So as always please do let us know your thoughts. Thanks!Please note that these changes are not yet live. The patch repository is still in the process of updating. We expect the process to take a few more hours. I'll post back here when it's complete.
Please also note that the total size of the client installation has increased by around 500MB so be sure to check that you have sufficient disk space before patching.
-KFR
And another update today
RedBedlam
Joined: 18 Jul 2001
Posts: 5319
Location: RedBedlam
When the servers come back up the following changes will be live:
Have to see how many players return to play in game and see what effect that has on the lag, if most of the 5k players play without a noticable increase then they are certainly moving in the right direction.
THe fat lady is warming up but there is a chance of silencing her yet
These new updates now make the game look great. It is finally getting some attention
Hunting animals is finally in and so far it is great.
There are lots of things that need fixing like NPC moving across boards and well a whole list but it is getting there. For the first time in 3 months I am excited to play this game again.
We have an IRC channel and I notice lots of oldtimers coming back.
Keep up the development RedBedlam!
A few more months and I might just check this game out again...
Some people may laugh at sempi's comment about trees that get cut down and must regrow. Doesn't sound very exciting does it? BUT, the important thing to note is that this kind of realism is either built in now, or going to be built into many other facets of the virtual world.
The patch on Friday added grass, weeds, and various bushes to the landscape and it looks wonderful - well at least during the day. The underbrush is so thick up on the hillsides in some areas you can sometimes get seperated from your party if you don't stay close. They have also added animals finally and in the first couple days, many players were mauled by bears and wolves while walking through wildnerness areas. We already had a few organized hunts on the hillsides around Corstopitum and brought back some carcasses. I have yet to learn at what rate the animals will respawn but I'm assuming clearing out an area of wolves will last a while. In town we have a couple bulls, a goat, and a chicken but domesticating and reproducing them is either not implemented yet or we just don't know how yet.
Overnight it seemed the server population grew tremendously from just last week. Many old faces were seen in town. It's hard to tell just how many players there were in game over the weekend though because I suspect most of them were scattered over the vast wilderness areas practicing tracking and hunting down animals. I never saw more than 25 people at a time in Corstopitum.
Lag was minimal.
Why not? It costs me nothing but a little bit of time.
Even I'm surprised.
The're really pounding out the updates now. Another one yesturday and another one today!
For me, it's nutrition and tents!
RedBedlam
Joined: 01 Mar 2004
Posts: 336
Location: RedBedlam
RedBedlam
Joined: 18 Jul 2001
Posts: 5356
Location: RedBedlam
- Various hunting-related craft skill omissions and bugs fixed. Object classes affected include: carcass_goat, carcass_wolf, carcass_bear, tentm8_goatskin, goatskin_uncured, goatskin, wolfskin, bearskin, hide, furscrap, fur and also all hide and fur boots, kilts and fullkilts.
-KFRP.S. There are some noarts in there. We'll get the correct art assets patched out shortly.
Why not? It costs me nothing but a little bit of time.
Suprise meWhy not? It costs me nothing but a little bit of time.
Suprise me
<arrogance>
Who are you that I have to surprise you?
</arrogance>
-------
"At the very least, doing the wet towel snap should disconnect the nerves of the spinal column, causing total paralysis, thus enabling you to skin the bastard alive."
Hope this game does go up and up cus I played it in beta and got frustrated but still love the concept.
Might give it a few more months till I join.
I do remember thought that it got a review in the London Metro about Crucifing (?) a player cus he ganked new guys, that made me even more intrested.
I think you will find 1 or 2 answers
These changes are subject to further refinement.
Im a hardcore RV fan, all I can say is just keep waiting. You will know when its time to start coming to play it again.
Reason I say this is because I dont want people to think "Oh look its been updated lets go play" Then go play and are like "WTF is this pile of shi.?"
I think RV has a lot to offer and will be a great game if they can keep updating it and fix all the things that are wrong, also having said that, I think its going to be a long while before its ready.
About other games coming out before its done. Sure there will be lots of other MMO's but if you look at RV and the style of play it has, NOTHING is on the plate for any MMO coming out in the next 6 months or even a year from now like it.
Roma Victor has ideas and things in it that no other game is like and none Ive even seen trying to do some of the stuff they are doing or trying to do. Which is why I have so much hope for Roma Victor and will follow the game for a long time.
-MrDDT
Wow, sounds like the game has come a long way since beta. My question would be is it any fun? I mean it's one thing to implement something, another thing to make it realistic... but at heart it's still a game, and a game is designed around a concept of fun. So, from a scale of 1-10 how would you rate it's fun factor?
Some things that really urked me when I played beta:
There was no easy way to navigate your way through the landscape, since every area was very simular. This complicated the construction sites where you had to go to a mine or whatever and get resources and come back to your site (as a barbarian anyway) and you could end up spending many hours trying to find your way. Then the adding to construction site wasn't very fluid and was troublesome if not outright unecessary and tedious (5 min wait times between adding stuff to pile? That's not long enough for me to go do/start something else, and it's too long to make me wait!)
So the game had this concept in beta where it was aiming for all out realism but was failing because the game wasn't any fun! There's a fine line between the two and the developers seemed to not understand that if we wanted to spend 10 hours making a firewood pile we'd go outside and do it.
Then there were aspects like the animations were bland or none at all (new studies in game design show that it doesn't matter how good the graphics are, it just matters that the actions performed respond as intended with animations and in a quick manner (no 15 second sit down animations). So if you're chopping wood, if it shows someone chopping wood they would respond to it 10x better than if not).
How well do the animals respond AI wise? Is it intelligent or does it just chase you indefinately? Do they run out of stamina? Do they bleed? Give me more details!
I'm interested so far, and I'm tempted to invest the money and see what they do with it.
The animals: cows, goats, and chickens will run/walk away from you until you have a high enough taming skill. trying to handle them is difficult.
Bears and wolves will attack you. There have been many deaths by wolves, bears are seldom seen,
The movement is ok but they do not yet have collision with walls
Wolves, if near by, have a tendency to warp near you.
in short, not a very good AI right now, but we are just happy they are finally in.