Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Lets speculate :)
Reklaw
Member UncommonPosts: 6,495
Lets say you have a game..yes?
You know its still very rough to release, you know that when you put 20/30 people at once at on spot allot of these people will suffer badly by performance.
Now you have these 2 choices:
1. You release the game with a low number of servers but you already know allot people will not be able to play cause of the performance. Making the game instantly less appealing as many will not even bother.
2. You release the game with (actualy too)many servers so that performance is sort of spread-out and mainwhile you get the change to work on performance before limit the amount of servers as this way people are spread out therefor performance issues are somewhat limited.
I myself would go for option 2 as option 2 give more space to do those things, so like my topic titel says i'm pure speculating
Now the next delema is when to release, it has to be quick as money is running low...yes?
Again 2 choices:
1.You have the oppertunity to release it close to WoW/BC release
2. You may wait 5/6 months and its near to LotrO release
Would go for number 1 as i think i would be more secure knowing i released my game at the time another company only released a expension (sure along awaited expension for some) but to think my game would need to compete with lets just say pure the IP of LotrO would make my choice be easy to release it near WoW/BC.
Like i said pure speculating, let me hear your thought on what YOU would do based on what i just said how you start with your game, i'm not asking what you would do when you would release a game by yourself, i am asking what you would do given the red text
Comments
First, I wouldn't have designed such ridiculously complex graphics - there is absolutely no need for this level of complexity. It adds ZERO dimension to the game if it's completely unplayable with medium/high graphics!
Second, for as complex as all the graphics are, every single spell animation I've seen completely sucks.
Third, it's not even 20-30 people that would make my 2g ram, 2.8amd box stutter, something as stupid as someone riding a horse past me would just kill everything (once in a while this would happen).
You can't design a game with this level of graphics and expect people to be even remotely happy with 20 fps when there's NOBODY around. Compare the graphics to LOTRO... LOTRO did extremely nice graphics while not sacrificing for performance. The game ran like a dream on my computer! In all truth, I could make LOTRO look a lot better and run a lot faster than I could ever get VG to.
If there's sufficient hype around a game, the players will wait. Heck, I checked up on VG (once a monthish) since... early '05? So people will be happy to wait for a good game. This game, needed another year of development... at least.
- 35/36 warrior/cleric both deleted in May.
I'd go with a third option:
3. Realize that my MMO is poorly optimized and is clearly a resource hogging piece of bloatware. Find a way to optimze the client and improve performance, even if it means delaying the game, or mortgaging my company's future to a much larger corporation in order to get things to run smoothly.
There is NO excuse for an MMO in 2007 to be so poorly coded that 20-30 people in one area causes massive performance loss. The MMO market is unforgiving, and if my product causes these issues with such a small number of players and/or NPC's on screen at once, people won't stay around for long, as there are many other more stable, more polished games to choose from.
Again, I'd go for option 3:
3. Either secure additional funding or sell my company outright to a larger company so that there would be an influx of cash and resources available to extend development.
Again, the market is unforgiving these days. The time of half-finished, unpolished releases being acceptable is over. It's better to take the financial hit of additional loans and funding, or swallow my pride and sell so that the game would be in an acceptable state for public consumption. A half-finished, buggy, empty game just isn't going to fly anymore.
I'd go with a third option:
3. Realize that my MMO is poorly optimized and is clearly a resource hogging piece of bloatware. Find a way to optimze the client and improve performance, even if it means delaying the game, or mortgaging my company's future to a much larger corporation in order to get things to run smoothly.
There is NO excuse for an MMO in 2007 to be so poorly coded that 20-30 people in one area causes massive performance loss. The MMO market is unforgiving, and if my product causes these issues with such a small number of players and/or NPC's on screen at once, people won't stay around for long, as there are many other more stable, more polished games to choose from.
Again, I'd go for option 3:
3. Either secure additional funding or sell my company outright to a larger company so that there would be an influx of cash and resources available to extend development.
Again, the market is unforgiving these days. The time of half-finished, unpolished releases being acceptable is over. It's better to take the financial hit of additional loans and funding, or swallow my pride and sell so that the game would be in an acceptable state for public consumption. A half-finished, buggy, empty game just isn't going to fly anymore.
I myself and personaly will take your 3rd options and maybe a few steps futehr aswell. But thats not what i asked now have i
Right, so lets backtrack to the very beginning shall we, and work our way up:
I am Brad, hero of EQ, the real leetboy o' the gang, I once had a vision, and everyone sain knows I am not MBA material, do I:
1. Start and lead a company?
2. Work as creative councilor?
I am Brad, hero of EQ, leader of a company, leader of development. Do I:
1. Give proper tools for my employees to create a competing game?
2. Throw them in deep water?
I am Brad, hero of EQ, leader of a company. Do I:
1. Bash every other MMO in the making (and already made - including market leader, though I never actually played it), whilst spreading false hope about my own?
2. Lay my head down, tell something close to the truth about my game, and actually concentrate on finishing it?
... and so much more like these above. Seems like no brainers to you, eh? Well that only proves one thing : you are not the hero of EQ!
So, Reklaw, I would gladly join your argument, but it is pointless. Not one game designer was ever given those strict choices, to arrive there, where Sigil has, a lot of prior bad choices have to be made. It is entirely their fault, absolutely no outside factor. Like I said, I would speculate, but about something that is relevant, as you only pose the end questions!
Originally posted by Reklaw
My option would have been to put out a product that if even buggy would at least have had the servers optimized so as to limit crashes and lessen overall lag. We all shouldn't be treating this as the first time this has happened with a game. It's all too common these days for games companies to put out a game that isn't ready, or has the famous day one patch. Comitment to quality is rare at best recently and I think it's we the consumer that has to put our foot down, and say no more. Hopefullly all companies involved with mmo's are paying close attention to this little nightmare here and learning a lesson or two. mmo's are always a work in progress yet progress can't be made unless you have the basics of gameplay and enviroment solidly in place. I'll be interested to see if VG can bounce back from this.
Never mind people i thought people could indeed speculate on the things given, i was not asking for common sense as we all know what we might do when we indeed would have a game. All i ask speculate on the things i said, didn't work out that way cause seems peolple again needto read it as some form of fact as this is how it happend then this strange reaction about being in the 1999.........unfortunaly ...........i should have know a few people don't read.
Don't read ? Oh we can read fine. The answer is that NO ONE would choose either of the
presented options. How difficult is that to understand ?
It is hard, Reklaw.
I am just having too much fun in SWG.
-----
WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
Everybody ...including Sigil and SoE know this. It was launch now or never launch and completely waste millions of dollars invested.
Keeping track of the time would make an AMD 2.8 stutter. Ok..I exaggerate...but if one wants to play the latest and greatest games..one must upgrade. There is no way around it.
Everybody ...including Sigil and SoE know this. It was launch now or never launch and completely waste millions of dollars invested.
Keeping track of the time would make an AMD 2.8 stutter. Ok..I exaggerate...but if one wants to play the latest and greatest games..one must upgrade. There is no way around it.
If every other mmo on the market runs on that machine you cannot expect people to go out an upgrade for a game that most assuredly is not the latest and greatest. The killer will be if games like AoC, Warhammer, and Fury can run on the same rigs that Vanguard couldn't. We'll see what happens.
Thats not entirely true. Engines and IMHO good game engines in particular are scalable and well optomised. Ok there is a limit to this BUT the more machines that can play a game the more people can play. For MMO's with montlhy fees this is amazingly important aspect. Software maintenance costs money and a large subscriper base is needed for the work on expansions ( and gosh even bug fixes)
Vanguard is not in a good state. A lot of people find it unplayable. Performance is all over the show and isnt always matched to sheer processing power of a machines GPU or CPU. I myself have upgraded and dont really want to try vanguard until a free trial because of this. Whats the point of upgrading to run badly optomised / average software. ( though I supposed millions do this with windows vista.. evil wink!)
But I'm missing the point a bit here ....
Many other titles I have found to be surprisingly scalable engines. LOTRO has a great scalable engine which I found playable on a 2800 Xp with a old geforce FX card (parents PC). On minimim it ran great.,,, though was also playable on medium. Irony is LOTRO looks better on low then my old rig did on vanguard on medium. Crazy !
So in the end I will say if you want run on ultra high / high settings then .... yes... you probably need a six month old PC. However if a game isnt scalable or optomised ( and I daresay vanguard wasnt when I last looked) then forget it... the excuse about needing to upgrade will not wash. (Ironically Mr "Bad" Brad Mcquaid was blabbering about this on the FAQ ages ago which sent alarm bells in my head. Beware the developer telling you that you'll *have* to upgrade to playb there latest big bad game, its a sign.
And so the arguing in the vangaurd forums continue to make it the most popular game. Maybe it is not the most played but it is definitely the most talked about.
Anime art Community
Final Fantasy 7
Why would anyone choose the options given when the basic premise is so flawed? You're basically choosing how best to deceive your playerbase about performance, and how to cut your losses to bury the fact that your game isn't up to snuff.
Denied!!! Where are the SWG whiners?
eqnext.wikia.com