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"Indy"
conanowns
Member Posts: 114
You know what grinds my gears? People using the world "indie" to defend incomplete and broken games. Vanguard was a pos and no one defended it. And it had alot of devs and money.
So if youre sitting in your parents basement smoking weed then turn to your friends and say..."Heyyyyyy lets make a mmorpg!"
And after getting a loan from your parents to start development....you better make a good freaking game. No freaking excuses.
Quit using the word indie as a crutch for releasing crapy games. If you cant make a good game quit dont release trash and want us to buy it!
Comments
I don't play MO because it's made my an indie developer. I play MO because it's the only game on the market that has what I want in an MMO. I have more fun playing MO than DFO, or EVE. That's why SV has my money, not AV or CCP. Or Blizzard for that matter.
And thats fine...im glad you like it. But people saying all the bugs and other issues are because its a indie mmo and developer is a very poor argument. Are all indie game not good?
Before you nerdrage please learn the facts mkey.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
This is the same case for me. MO provided the things in a game that I'm looking for and enjoy (indie or not).
Regarding the OP, two things:
1. Games from major studios have plenty of bugs at launch as well.
2. You shouldn't cross-post.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
What grinds my gears are people who make the same post with the same title in two different forums on here at the same time, but that's just me.
I've stated the following more than once:
Indie <> incompetent, nor does it mean small, underfunded, "deserving of a break" or any of that gibberish. Indie developers simply have no publisher funding their development. MMOs are commercial products. The companies that develop them are businesses. As such, they're responsible for creating a quality, marketable product. Also, like every other business, they're responsible for ensuring they have a sound business plan, solid management and talent, adequate capita, appropriate licensing, etc... If they can do these things, they'll probably succeed. If they can't, they'll fail. It's economic natural selection and no different than what happens to brick-and-mortar enterprises who suffer the same failures.
KingsIsle Entertainment, Inc. is a great example of an indie developer who has crafted a fun, quality, award winning, "niche" (children's collectible card game) that actually appeals to more than it's target audience and that has been wildly successful! It may not be the indie ffa PvP sandbox game that DF, MO and Xsyon fans, but it's proof that an indie company can put out a quality product in a relatively short amount of time and succeed.
~Ripper
I agree with this. When big companies have a huge budget and can afford to hold off on a release, but don't, and we get an inferior product - that pisses me off.
Also, to the OP. You said that Vanguard sucked and no one defended it. Naturally. They had a large studio working on the game with financial backing. They still managed to make a shit game, or at least one less than acceptable to most people. SV has done alright, even though the game needs a lot of work. Assuming it survives, it will be great in 6 months to a year.
I have highlighted what I feel if the only important factor: The quality of the product.
I don't care if the company has 5 employees or 500. I don't care if it's the first game or their 20th.
I don't care if they have a publisher or self publish.
I don't care if they are nice guys or arrogant jerks.
I don't care if they are from Kansas or Sweden.
I don't care if they are in it for the money or in it for personal satisfaction.
All I care about is if they made a quality product, and if not.. is the cost of the product inline with the inferior nature of it.
In Starvault's case, my opinion is that they failed miserably. I also acknowledge that different folks have their own likes and dislikes. These folks are allowed to cut the company slack for being "indy", but the excuse doesn't fly with me.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I though this thread was about Indiana Jones.. I am disapointed
However games from major studios have plenty of content and features aswell. I rather play a bugged game with content then a bugged game without it. Neither can I recall mmos from major studios having game breaking bugs such as reds going blue, vanishing items, sticky weapons, exploding mounts.. the list can go on. Their bugs are either crashes or annoyance bugs/not working quests.
they don't hold of on the release because they want to get it into the public for a lot of reasons, 1 of which it's a lot easier for their players as well as them working together to find things wrong weather than just the devs looking for it. Also, Vanguard never really got a lot of hype, i'm pretty sure WoW was peaking at the time it was released, so not a lot of people were worried about another MMO on the market, as more and more people get tired of WoW people start to worry about the mmo's on the market, there are a lot of mmo's coming out within this year and next that all have a lot of hype, it was not the same then.
What really grinds my gears are butt wipes that make charge backs to games companies when they knew they didn't like the game before buying it, but that's just me!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Agreed, Now, would you kindly describe - in detail - what is a good game?
In my books good games have:
1. Dedicated devs that know what they are doing. Or at least think before doing anything.
2. A MMO that they like and love.
3. A plan of some sort.
Example: EVE Online.
I don't care about graphics and animations. Surely visuals and animations should be improved, when possible. Yet this is not the key factor in MMO(RPG)s.
I care about lore, game mechanics and evolution. And the fact that devs have some degree of intelligence.
Kingsisle is an indie developer in much the same way that Chickenfoot is an indie band.
Chickenfoot- Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony -- Van Halen Joe Satriani Chad Smith -- Red Hot Chili Peppers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickenfoot
Kingsisle--Tom Hall--Wolfenstein 3d, Doom, Spear of Destiny, Duke Nukem 2, Deus Ex
J. Todd Coleman-- ChaosMUD, Shadowbane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KingsIsle_Entertainment
OP: The problem is that it DOES matter if a company is funded or not...
It doesn't take a great deal of math to see the difference between 80 developers and $40 million vs 5 developes and $5 million.
It's a BIG difference and the game is going to reflect that. Take Infiniti: Earth. 1 person is developing that game on their own, and it has taken YEARS to get to where a pre-Alpha is possibly within sight. Now it's clear that he may be one of the most intelligent engineer/developers alive, yet it has still taken since 2005 to get something that even resembles the skeleton of a game. A 10 year development cycle isn't out of the question.
Mortal Online released early, no doubt. It isn't ready for commercial release. It's obvious they NEED the funds to continue development. I think they're doing OK, not good, but OK. They need to show the propensity to fix bugs and add content at a quick rate from this point forward or the game will fail.
Tecmo Bowl.
MO got almost no lore and broken game mechanics.. So much for that
In my books a good game is a content rich and working game without gameplay breaking bugs. I could care less what Devs love/are doing as long as they get the game working and continue developing it.
Indie <> amateur. Indie, when discussing game development, has nothing to do with the pedigree of it's staff. Indie means that the studio doesn't have a major publisher funding development in order to secure publication rights. In the case of KingsIsle, it was founded by two industry veterans. Starvault was founded by amateurs. Both are indie, but one is markedly more successful, which underscores my points above.
~Ripper
Because they have no enough money to hire enough staff to release a polished, finished product ? Does it cut it for you ?
In music, industry vets getting together to make a new band/music label is called a powerband or sometimes a vanity project/vanity label, depending on how commercial it's intended to be. The bring experience but they also bring resources, which means less time riding in a band bus playing in out-of-the-way bars and more time concentrating on developing their music. By analogy, Kingsisle was able to afford more lower level programmers to iron out subsystem problems, could afford to do more development in house and was under less financial pressure to release the game.
Depending on your definition, Tabula Rasa and Vanguard were made by indy developers. I don't think so, but by your definition, they were up until their acquisition by NCsoft and SOE respectively, but most of their development was done at that point
"Independent video game development is the process of creating video games without the financial support of a video game publisher. While large companies can create independent games, they are typically designed by an individual or a small team of as many as ten people, depending on the complexity of the project."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_video_game_development
Yes.. I wikied it....
And as for your comparison to Vanguard... Sigil (the developer) had a publishing deal with Microsoft right up until the time Sony got involved. As for Tabula Rasa.. Destination Games (the Developers) became the North American Headquarters for NCSoft in 2001 (Tabula Rasa was released at the end of 2007).... So needless to say neither would be considered an "indy" developer...
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
Can you link to where Tabula Rasa or Vanguard were announced as self-publishing? To the best of my knowledge, they were always slated to be published by NCSoft and MS/SOE respectively.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
The powerband/supergroup analogy doesn't really apply to Wizard101, or even most game developers. If anything, that analogy is closer to 38 studios, where Curt Schilling pulled in R.A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane, where Schilling was a huge fan and pulled in superstars for his dream project. KingsIsle was founded by industry vets, but it's not really the same at all. Also, they're only relatively big now that they're successful. . They started very small and went through at least one round of layoffs, to the best of my knowledge.
As for Vanguard and Tabula Rasa - no. They were never indie titles.
Age of Conan ring any bells? Vanguard? Warhammer? Anarchy Online? All games with very significant technical problems at launch - problems at least as "gamebreaking" as the ones you claim in Mortal Online.
Regarding content: Of course, "content" varies depending on the type of game being discussed, but literally every major game to come out in the last 5 years has been criticised for lack of content at launch. Every one of them. Some of the most recent - Aion, Champions Online, and Star Trek Online - are still being lambasted for it even today.
No one should excuse any game - indie or AAA - for bugs or technical problems. But "quality", like just about everything else here, is based on individual opinion. And, as opposed to some other things, computer games are entertainment, so "quality" isn't just technical - it's the quality of enjoyment it provides to its intended target audience, and is mostly subjective. Technical status either enhances or detracts from that enjoyment. To what level? That's up to the individual.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
THIS. I 100% agree with.
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 to be blind to the fact that they will exist in every game, to varying levels, is foolish.
How bad they are is up to each player to decide by how they spend their money.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Again we agree. You decide on the quality of the product, not grade on a curve because it's some indy company. A badly bugged game from an indy company is no better than a badly bugged game from EA. The only possible mitigating factor would be cost. If title X costs half of what title Y does... I would tend to be more forgiving. If they both cost similarly... I will judge both similarly.
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