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Henrik's latest words on Mortal, and my comments
jimbo775
Member Posts: 30
Official Mortal Online forums original thread: http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/55492-house-commons-chat-log-tindrem-opens-fighting-event.html
Questions made by "Anubis" on IRC, on 11/11/2010
Answers by Henrik Nystrom (Starvault's owner, Mortal Online's director)
My comments
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Before the epic patch we were told that a complex and impressive AI was essentially 'ready to ship' and was simply waiting for the navmesh to be added. Epic patch arrived some time ago now, when will we see this AI and what has been holding it up?
Like we said before, we have indeed got the software to fully support navmesh and we have implemented navmesh/collision in the entire world now, its been an ongoing process to get it to work, and implementing navmesh was not a simple task
Wasn't it "ready to ship"? What happened? Navmesh is your problem, not ours. We want the AI working, and we want it now, as it was "ready to ship".
Ai can now navigate around collision, we still have a few object types in the world that needs collision serverside to make AI see it as well.
So we have been working on both critical issues/bugs within the game, alongside working on AI/Navmesh, AI have taken an important step to get closer to AI standards, and we are about to take the steps to enable some AI actions that will benefit from the new navmesh system
Enable "some" AI actions? Don't you think it's time already to have a fully working AI on your game?
Are we getting more mount types and other equipment for mounts such as more saddles maybe for 2 people etc? If so, when will we see them?
There will be new creatures and mounts, we have hold back on new creatures and dungeons untill we can use the navmesh properly. We do have a creature package that we will put live very soon, but like we mentioned before we are still working hard on AI/Navmesh
How soon? Soon in Starvault's terms can mean anything from a week to 10 years. How soon?
Atm we are focusing more on Social and PvE since we saw the poll on the forums, but we still have to work on stability and bugfixes.
So we are interested to hear feedback on social features from you as well now when we are working in that area.
A lot of you say we need more fluff, now we need to define some good fluff as well
Fluff? We want a working game to begin with. Leave fluff like fishing for when you actually have a working game.
When can we expect the implemetation of the new skills Alchemy, butchery and fishing2.0? Bonus points for crossbow info
Atm we are working on fishing 2.0 and butchery which is getting very close to being finilized. These two are indeed 2 intereting social features, butchery is also very important because it balance armors in the world.
Wait, weren't you working on Navmesh and critical bugs?
Butchery is important because this is how you get the materials for making armor per design, so it differs a lot from how you get it today, hence some unbalance in armor crafting and value.
Fishery is coming along a bit more interesting than we described it I think. Its a very cool opend dynamic fishing system, that also now will tie in other areas.
Will mages get any buff on mounted magery ? couse right now there is no one using bagery and mounts .... since u buff hardly meele dmg and archery why mages cant use magery on mounts ...
Magery have stood very still for awhile, it was not possible to start fully focus on its changes with our current issues we had to focus on.
But yes, there will be changes to magery, mounted magery will be changed so its usable again yes. and there may also be a skill tied to it similar to ranged and melee skills for mounts
When? We are tired of your "there will be" promises.
When will we see a patch with more social and PvE content?
Atm, we are going though our social pve features within the team, we are making a plan for each area. We do have a few small ones ready within the next two weeks. Along with this we are interested to communicate with you regarding the social features we have on our list
Wait, weren't you working on Navmesh, critical bugs and fishery/butchery?
I think we will do an update on our under dev section, so you can see what kind of social features we are bumping on that list
But like I said, we are also interested to hear your ideas on social features, we do have a few major ones we mentioned before such as long term wounds and social points
Those are tied into social features
When can we expect content? currently theres nothing to do in MO and the population seems to be dying
We have been working hard on the core of our systems, implementing systems to prevent further dupe issues on pets etc, this have stolen some time for us to focus on new content
Wait, weren't you working on Navmesh, critical bugs, fishery/butchery and social PVE features?
But now we will be able to set some ppl on new content and features again, like I said before, we are adding social and pve next. This also means we will reopen dungeons and be able to use them properly.
When? We are tired of your "there will be" promises.
Is the concept of the 'deva' dead? Will we see something related to it soon?
It's not totaly dead, but its put on hold for now, we are focusing hard now on what we really need at first, that most people will enjoy before continue on those areas.
Easy to promise heaven in a powerpoint presentation, right?
Will we ever be seeing an improvement to (female) player models? I do think being able to hold my lunch when looking at a female would be nice.
Funny, I was discussing that with someone in the team recently, we could indeed make our females look a bit better, however its pretty time consuming so Im not sure if we will jump right on it atm, but perhaps along with the social skills when you can "entertain" to heal mental long term wounds.
Do you have any plans to improve the chat system (ways to communicate) soon? The chat system is imo very weak and even weaker after the whisper function was removed
Yes, the entire chat system is actually totaly rebuilt, Paratus have recently converted this to fit our flash system as well, which means total control and we can use it exaclty how we want
Chat looks the same to me as it looked 1 year ago.
We have evaluated the possibility to actually help the players in this area as we do see a problem in it, especially for new players
So we are looking into grouping possibilites and sending that piegon, also to see if your m8s are online or not.
When will the south receive som sweet lovin'? Currently most of the good stuff is located in the north, and there aren't many reasons to go south of lake sausage. Are there any plans for exclusive (attractive) content for this part of the world?
We have a huge resource patch incoming soon that will add important resources spread over myrland, most of these resources are pickables, but this also adds both important areas but a new way to make a living on exploring and finding good resources this way for use or sell.
When? And what will you guys break this time with this "huge" patch?
Do you agree that facilitating trade and commerce is a top priority? Regarding that, what plans do you have to fix the economy and make a trader, for instance, a valid playstyle?
We do see that right now we do need a better way of communicate and trade to help the economy going indeed.
We have already taken the first step to add the possibility to hire vendors in major cities, to start selling your goods that way, but you would always make a better profit if you give them access to your "house vendors" as they will cost less
We are looking into posting boards at local cities as well to be able to contact people and services within the game as most people do not even read the forums or trade areas on forums.
Really? Didn't you see this coming? You bash WoW and alike in your powerpoint presentation 2 years ago and now you want people to be able to contact each other ingame for the sake of economy? What's next? Global trade channels?
What is the plans for the Economy ingame? Is it UO style or Eve Online Style
Im a huge fan of Both Old UO and Eve online, there is one problem for us when it comes to when we tried to take the best from both games when it comes to trading
For instance, in you player vendors spread out the world worked so well because you could hand out your trade card "rune" and your shop was running fine
We decided to wait with instant teleports over the world, just to be able to have the trade route and area resources tradings that are a very good workign system in eve online
So, the problem we have now is that its almost impossible for a player to find someones shop.
In Uo you simply got one rune for a certain shop and you were in business
So, because we lack that, it doesnt work as in Eve for us as we do lack the "auction" house or communication
So we really need to add some features within the game to get this going
No kidding?
And because we still believe adding isntant teleporting will destroy trading routes and some other coming features
We simply need to add more tools to communicate and trade
Vendors in cities, posting boards, and messages over the world etc is probably what we need to add
Probably? I suggest you make up your mind right now and start implementing it... Do you realize Mortal's economy is dead?
Gates, keeps and houses require keys to open. Any plans to add accesslists or maybe doorguards to allow or disalow ppl access?
We allways wanted the players to be in charge of this and the security of everything. But as you understand in games thats not allways the most fun way of playing, (but in some cases it is)
We have got feedback regarding this a few times now
That people do not run around with keys because its to risky
So that means everyone have a logged off char just to let ppl in
And when doing that its a huge risk that the enemy will run in as well, thats hard to prevent, even thou we like the thoughts that it should be a risk and thats up to the players to learn their own tactics
But if it comes down to that most ppl think its "to much" to run it like we do now, and that we should add a door guard that automaticly opens and close and even automaticly prevents enemies from going in as well, then we will look into that.
Yea, i saw that in a themepark game once, just can't remember the name... was it World of Warcraft?
One of the primary economic problems I notice right now is the segregation of time zones between gathers, crafters, and customers. The inability to send items to offline players hinders the ability of crafters that are not able to play for hours on end and sell their stuff or find someone selling what they need...
[14:45] <[QT]Khalim> Are there any plans to implement a system that will allow players to transfer goods without being online at the same time? For example a drop box where a player A could send an item to player B with a Pay on Delivery setup and then player B pick up and pay for the item at the same location.
To the first one: I think I answered that before, yes we see that we do need more tools to let players gatch each others because of large time zone differences
We are looking into an auction house not like the ones in wow, but a house where you can trade resources in large amounts in an effective way, this way you will use a ticket for doing this, that will help to trade with ppl in other time zones
Really? Didn't you see this coming? You bash WoW and alike in your powerpoint presentation 2 years ago and now you want an auction house in Mortal? That goes against the "vision", doesn't it?
Any idea when the desync will be fixed? getting hit by someone whos 30 feet away is getting old
We have mentioned a huge update on our hardware that will let us utilize much better performance on our nodes, we have pretty recently found out that we had a serious bug within this system, which basicly means the more node power we used the less performance we gained because of loading data from the entire myrland map multiplied, short explined.
OH! You just recently found out that you have a bug in the nodes performance? What took you 1.5 year? Cut this crap Henrik, lag/desync have been going on since block A and you haven't been able to solve it so far.
We had a patch planned for today that will change this, which means our nodes will get A LOT more performance to calculate data which requires accurecy such as movement and hitting people
I saw you saying this same thing what, 10 times before? And yet, lag/desync are still here, 1.5 year after block A. Sorry but i don't believe you. Now you will make it happen, and talk about it after it happens.
We postponed this server update from today to tomorrow, its not a client patch. So we will test this tomorrow, so we are very interested to hear your feedback on overall performance tomorrow when this is live
The difference is so big that Epic Games was just shocked it would run on the setting we use atm after going very deep into our current settings, so we should notice improvement, so lets see how that turns out tomorrow.
Could you please describe what are these social points you're talking about? something like a town-specific karma system?
Ah, well, we have extended the idea behind karma, wound system heat system etc that we have mentioned before, since we noticed a lot of ppl in our community are interested in more sand/social things to do
So, we have just started to brainstorm a bit to actually tie each action in more areas that affects more things, for instance each action will add to your social pool point or not.
Don't you think "brainstorming" is something you do BEFORE YOU RELEASE YOUR GAME to the public? Do you think i want to pay for you to be "brainstorming"?
The social points are not needed to compete or anything like that
But it gives more areas into those who are interested for isntance in accessing "secret guilds" discounts, trade resources between cultures etc
This means it will be more reasons to explore different areas andcities as this adds to that pool
So we are looking to tie this to the lore in the game world
Again, we are interested to hear feedback, and thoughts, theres lots to it, so it will require its own session to go through everything in that system
However its mosly an addition to the current wound system and hunger system and also a way to tie more lore into affect
When will start to see NPC guards [Hired] [Patrolling]?
We can actually add that now, we do have the required code for it, we simply need to set up rules for it.
Simply? If it's so simple why don't you do it today? What's holding you back?
So depending on our prio list, it should be within the game not far from now.
When? We are tired of your "there will be" promises.
What is the deal with the second candle??
What about it?
Hehe, thats for you to find out.
Will craftable bags be implemented soon? So we can say, put a complete set of armor in one bag, like...again in UO. Bonus if we can find out about UO style looting/backpacks now that flash support is here.
Yes, just like you say, flash let us to do that very easy, what stops us from putting it in just like that, is that a few of our old systems needs some other areas to be in flash as well, so you will see a couple of areas being converted into flash
When? We are tired of your "there will be" promises.
Some things do not work well with flash when some things are still the old system
And some of those systems are not that easy to "convert" so it do take some time, some are easier than others. but as soon as the req system is in flash as well, we will have bag in bag systems, also a system where you can attach gloves into 1 "item" for faster euquipments.
When can we expect to get more rewarding loot? The comming two weeks together with new creatures?
Im not sure what kind of "rewarding" loot our new creatures will have they do fit our "resource" system, but it will get more rewarding with butchery/skinning, collectables to decorate in houses etc similar to UO. What im eager to add is a creature package, not only "animals" but some really cool looking MO unique creatures/monsters, those will have some "rewarding" loot for sure, and AI should be good
AI should be good? When? We are tired of your "there will be" promises.
Hows the work going on Tindrem?
The features that we wanted ready before being able to open Tindrem is now possible for us to work with, the core of Tindrem is ready, but we also left it there untill we had the workign NPCS and tasks, we do have that support now, but need to put it in Tindrem as well
Tindrem was promised several times for RELEASE...
Other bugs have prevented us to be able to focus on that however.
But like I said, we are now putting a few people on those areas as well.
Are there any plans to expand / change the hitboxes of npcs, especially wisents?
We are going to add one addition to our creatures hitboxes, but thats more for supporting "huge" creatures, to be able to walk between its "legs" properly and "walk" on it. other than that its mostly tweaks on the current hitboxes and movement on the actual creatures. But if theres an issue with our Wisents hitboxes we will look into them for sure.
With our current hit system its your actual blade that interact with the mesh on the creature as long as its "trace" box is "around" the mesh, so it cant get more accurate than this. But like I said if the box is off the mesh then it will work worse.
The mortal community want news about mages, about magical school, about aim system, what's news for that ?
I think we have talked a bit about this before, but in short, we will use our arc/arrow system used on ranged in our magic, and each magic school will be different from the other, there will be diff styles and ways of casting a spell.
When? We are tired of your "there will be" promises.
When the final gui in flash will be implement especialy the keyboard binding option a lot of them are lacking
We have a few people working on the flash gui atm, they are differently attached into each others so like I described before in most cases now we need to convert more than one window before being able to patch it live
Wait, weren't you working on Navmesh, critical bugs, fishery/butchery, social PVE features and the core of your systems?
But we are working on it, and it shouldnt be to long now.
When? We are tired of your "there will be" promises.
When are we gonna get the fluff and how high of a priority is it? I would like to see card games (gambling) ,chess and also the brawling ring to open up in fab (just make it a none guard zone)
We are already working on "card games" for taverns and social features. Some things are done, and we are mostly working on social/pve atm
Wait, weren't you working on Navmesh, critical bugs, fishery/butchery, social PVE features, the core of your systems and the flash GUI?
We already have our first "test" mini game in mortal online, but it doesnt "fit" into the game im afraid. but it runs great and works very well.
I don't see how a mini-game that doesn't fit in the game matters here, working or not. Will you make mini-games that fit into the game?
Will there be more interesting ways to engage in combat and interact with things? For instance, a 'disable' or 'sabotage' skill for engineers which can be used on siege equipment to render them inactive, or a 'sneak-attack' skill for daggers users.
Yes, we will continue to expand more tactics on the battlefield, not to much atm because of lack of social/pve content, but for instance like you says, sabotage siege machines etc to disable them for a period of time is one of the things we really want in for sure.
Alright Everyone thanks for coming I belive your CEO has one last thing before we end this
Please stand by
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A lot of "there will be" and excuses, nothing solid. Just another big load of the usual massive starvault BS.
Mortal Online is like a prostitute that tells you she loves you so she can get more money out of your horny pocket.
Comments
Wow....to whomever is currently playing this game: Let me just say that when you are outside of the box like me (used to support MO strongly), you realize this is a complete and total phony of a software company. I have never posted bad about Starvault until right now. I can't believe I'm reading that there are STILL desynch issues and there is STILL no Tindrem. How can they keep saying over and over and over that they "fixed desynch...oh we found a MAJOR PROBLEM". Then, have it happen again next couple patches?
Also, there are also always excuses about "systems" and "merging" and "implementations" and "migrations". As a software developer by trade, I know exactly what this means. "Very bad design". When you have spaghetti code by inexperienced people, it becomes harder (if not impossible) to add onto.
Disclaimer: This is not a troll post and is not here to promote any negative energy. Although this may be a criticism, it is not meant to offend anyone. If a moderator feels the post is inappropriate, please remove it immediately before it is subject to consideration for a warning. Thank you.
Disclaimer: This is not a troll post and is not here to promote any negative energy. Although this may be a criticism, it is not meant to offend anyone. If a moderator feels the post is inappropriate, please remove it immediately before it is subject to consideration for a warning. Thank you.
Henrik is simply the best bser i'v ever come accros in any video gaming development team.
he should just stop wasting his time with the entertainment business and become a politician.
I agree 100% with you Excalaber. As I have said elsewhere, I believe it would be easier to scrap the project and start over with a different tool set, such as the Hero Engine.
WTS Full loot bag.
Starvault got me. I fell for it hook, line and sinker. I knew that MO wouldn't be the greatest game ever coming from a small developer but I'm impressed at the train wreck that happened and how long they've kept it going.
I disagree... He might be the biggest, but hardly the best. To be good you have to be believable, not sure too many are "buying it" anymore.
I win!!! LOL@U
Ouch man! just ouch!
you are just ruthless man
Henrik and Paul Barnett should meet up sometime.
You ask for X, he'll promise it and talk about how it's being done then he will forget about it 5 minutes later.
OT:
Gonna make a new post on Monday with the real story behind the boomsticks, expect drama and interesting chat logs.
I used to be interested in MO. Over a year ago.
Then, as I watched the game develop and the Beta moved on, I saw enough red flags that caused me to avoid this.
Sorry, but if they pre-sell the game and dont deliver promised CD's for months that should be warning enough. Then, to top that off, when the packages were received they contained a version of the client that did not work and that could not be patched to work (i dont know if it was later fixed).
To hear all of this BS and to hear the CEO say some of these things and to listen to current state of the game posts, even if 1% of all the bad is true, this game isn't worth the money compared to what is out there already.
From the sound of this interview, the CEO just doesn't get it. He just doesn't have vision or design concept.
He wants a piece of this and a piece of that, has no idea how to meld them or work them into his game.
A player-run economy needs to have tools that work with the game and meld with the game. It sounds like they wanted the game so "hardcore" that it actually prevents an economy.
Oh, and I have to comment on one thing from the OP. You might want to educate yourself on a game you make fun of. WoW doesn't have player housing. There are no door guards or player-owned spaces in the game. And this feature could be found in fairly early UO, which is a game that MO is heavily influenced by.
I'd say it's a tough race between Henrik of Mortal Online and Erling Ellingsen of Funcom.
It's like the immovable object vs unbreakable force, neither of them can possibly win.
I wasn't making fun of WoW. They are the ones bashing WoW all the time, making fun and selling their game by mocking other games.
I was comparing Henrik's idea of player-owned houses to WoW's faction town guards, like for example the horde base in STV. If any alliance approaches the location, town guards attack on sight.
It's just like, their constant bashing other games is coming back to haunt them because they have failed to deliver.
Mortal Online is like a prostitute that tells you she loves you so she can get more money out of your horny pocket.
As a follower of this game in beta I read the chat and its clear this game is severely damaged. I just cannot believe people are still subscribing. Everything they asked was yeah were working on it and yeah in the future. This game has been out for months and doesnt even sound like its 50% complete. I wonder how much longer they can milk this angle.
Heh, this reminds me of what we call "marketecture", meaning a marketing person telling you what it's going to be.
Instead of a real architecture, with a real schedule, with a real staffing plan, yuo have a marketing guy spinning marketecture.
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2025: 48 years on the Net.
SV were honest in that they acknowledged that the player base would be funding the devlopment of MO. However, most thought they would have been out of the Alpha stage at release. IMO people were mislead to believe that the game was in a compotent beta state, which it was not. It's still not really in what I would call a beta stage, particularly in the sense of having most systems and features in place, even if said systems are flakey. If I had the captital I would head hunt mats and hire him to oversee develoopment of MO with the Hero Engine.
I guess u wernt around 2003 when EVE launched, Im glad that those EVE fanbois stayed with that buggy half finished game.
Look what EVE is today.
I'm not saying MO will do the same but we can hope.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
I had high hopes for this game and even fell for the whole preorder thing. I played it for a few days after release and quit...I am glad I did not waste any more time playing it. The game does not warrant a monthly sub fee at all, let alone a box price abov e $20.
And no...I did not attempt to get a refund or a chargeback hehe.
I too decided not to go for a refund too, even though many are technically entitled to one; particularly as many of the features advertised to be in at release were and continue to not be in the game. Regardless of their refund policy they cannot not get away from such a fact. My reason for not asking for a refund? Well, I knew the risk I was taking and viewed my purchase as more of charity
people were actually getting a refund?
My only regret is that someone wasted their money buying it for me as a gift.
That is the part that freaks me out! "shocked it would run. . . after going very deep into our current settings". That is not a good sign - confirming for me some of the previous comments regarding coding etc.
A few days later and the only thread about it seems to show that it is not much better. I have not been in game since though so I can't comment. Likely there are more than one issue that cause the problem. I am thinking needle in a haystack to find it all.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
What I find strange... didn't the programming team fly to the US awhile back for the first "EPIC" patch that was also supposed to eliminate the desynch problem? When working WITH Epic games.. on the DESYNC issue.. did noone notice how out of wack these settings were? Sorry... this just seems very far-fetched to me... which I guess is confirmed by the results (or lack of) from the mentioned patch (as you state above).
@ The OP: I have to hand it to you.. you absolutely NAILED him with your comments. Simply taking every item he claims as being "Currently worked on" results in:
We are already working on "card games" for taverns and social features. Some things are done, and we are mostly working on social/pve atm
Wait, weren't you working on Navmesh, critical bugs, fishery/butchery, social PVE features, the core of your systems and the flash GUI?
I mean.. is this really their core development problem? They have a small team.. (maybe 16?).. the bulk of which are not even programmers, but artists, animators, sound guys... etc. So you are really only left with a handful of people.. and they are "currently working on" Navmesh (AI), Critical bugs, Fishing, Butchery, Social PvE, Core systems, flash GUI, card games, Taverns... not to mention the actual roaming Guards that were promised, magic schools, mounted spells, Alchemy, increased pickables, weapon and armor balance, siege functionality, improved territory control, enhanced newbie experience including quests, and improved housing. These are all things that were said to be worked on by SV either in this interview or in prior statements.
I dunno... if they really ARE working on all of those things in parallel I think it explains why most patches are released and cause issues. This is also evidenced in the Mats email where he complains about having his work pushed out the door incomplete and how it reflects on him (unfairly).
I think small developers need to have a more narrow focus and absolutely nail the core of their game.. then continually build on that solid foundation.. one piece at a time.
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
Thats an aweful lot of things they are going to implement when they cant even fix the swimming mechanic, get the AI to fight back, adjust simple math within the game, or balance the weapons.
Seriously this is just more diusional crap from Henrik. There is ONE reason why when they implement one feature they break 3 others and thats bad code.
I belive Mats Ideas are solid as are Henriks dilusions but the problem is they do not have the experience or the resources to implement them.
http://www.prophecyguild.net
Of course its far Fetched , you know weve been down this road numerous times through out the entire beta and now at release. Henrik must think since most of the early beta testers are now gone that he can spew out the same crap false promises to the next generation of players all 20 of them. At this point someone somewhere in this company or even Henriks father should be realizing they can't keep this company going without a 7500+ subscriber miracle in the next few months someone with a brain has to understand this right ? Or am I just crazy ?
http://www.prophecyguild.net
What I don't understand is why people bother with a game like this, after such a long period of neglect. It is obvious their priorities are displaced and in my opinion that it should be on the market. Give up, let the game go and move on to better pastures.
I guess people bothered with the game because the game design on paper is really, really good. In a way MO has been positive in this respect; that is it has set the gorund in terms of ideas for what is wanted by the playerbase. Hopefully these ideas can be picked up and better executed by others, this is my sincere hope.