Ok...I'm looking at Release 28 and don't see any DoF effects or anything in the options referring to it, and I don't see it mentioned in the R28 Instructions.
You're correct, I apologize. I expected it to be in the character creation screen, but the old models and effects are still there.
They may have had issues getting it rigged in or something, but I'll look into it and check on why we're not seeing it when I get a chance. I'm certain it'll be there at some point, though. Chris Spears and I specifically talked about how a better looking avatar was critical to the new-player experience, and how the new models would allow new effects and not look as flat. They even brought in a new guy on the team just to get that piece of the game up to spec.
Ok, thanks for the explanation, but I was specifically referring to the depth-of-field effect as depicted in the screenshot. The new male avatar model is in R28 -- just not the depth-of-field effect. So perhaps that feature isn't in the build we have yet. Or they took a screenshot of the model outside of the game but in Unity or some special build they have which renders the avatar with much higher quality, with infinitely better lighting, and with depth-of-field effects.
Perhaps we got an early sneak peak at how the game will look with DX11/DX12 support, which is coming soon according to their Q2 schedule.
"In large part, the rapid deployment of new scenes is due to tools and techniques the team has put together over the last couple years of developing Shroud of the Avatar. The critical story-related scenes tend to take a bit longer, but of course the general environmental scenes for filling in empty land tend to be easily adapted by modifying existing scenes. Without the need to ensure specific story features are present and the rigging to support it, the more general scenes are rolling out at an epic pace."
I support the game and the vision of what it will be at release. The devs do work hard and they have been making some good changes as of late. They are impeccable when it comes to getting servers up on time with new releases and keeping downtime very limited. I look forward to playing this game for years, but this part of your article is a bit misleading.
They are crunched for time and had to take other scenes already in game and paste them to these new scenes. I think I know what you're talking about they can make the same scenes look a bit different without a lot of work though, like Kingsport and Solania, that made them look different. The scenes that got a lot of work, like Skrekk look excellent though.
I know they plan to go back to these scenes later on to fix them to be unique scenes of their own and I don't have a problem with that, they're crunched for time, but that one part about how so many scenes were added so quickly could have been a bit more clear. Great article though.
Not a single comment on this yet and it has been up for hours. Is there nobody on mmorpg.com interested in this game other than the author of this article?
It's been more than a week now and there are only a few comments from a few people. The SotA forums are pretty slow, and the same names come up repeatedly there too. Newcomers are chased out by those who've been there since the beginning. Those who dissent have their accounts banned. If you complain, you get negative feedback, ganked, and kicked from the forums.
Because the game has not improved in such a long time, interest has plummeted. In addition, Steam ratings repel people who might otherwise have been interested. And I'd say it's for good reason.
The graphics are nice, the male character improved, with plans for other characters. But why? Each scene is a ghost town, tiny, and unbalanced. It's just not worth playing.
If you own no property, the game is truly not worth it, even for that "tiny" investment people are discussing here.
As an employee of MMORPG.com, your allegiance is to the readers of this website; your job is to inform them of whether a game is worth playing or not, and to report unbiasedly news about the genre as it comes in.
As the comments below show, you clearly were not aware that the screenshots shown, which are still branded from "SotA" and are almost certainly pre-provided to you, are not currently possible in the R28 build. Your duty is to either play the game "as is" and report on what the actual experience you have was, which would be honest reviewing, or make quite clear the associated media in this positivity piece is from Portalarium, and is a statement of intention, reporting on the claims themselves, and not what the players can expect now.
And where are your own screenshots, taken during your own play time? Did you actually play SotA Release 28, and if not, why not?
In particular, SotA is still not optimised even for monster systems like my own; what sort of system would be required to run the rendering in those screen shots on top of what it already struggles with? You can't know, as the public has no access to that engine build yet, so why is this article under "Features", and not "Hype" when you clearly haven't actually tested any of the features you list, indeed many of them are just taken word for word from the press releases as future aims, not current features?
Why should your audience here, which is your primary duty as an employee of the webpage remember, trust the marketing screenshots you use, especially when even larger development teams are quite happy to pull an Alien Colonial Marines on the public and never release the higher rendered game engine they used?
You work for us, your readers, not Portalarium, no matter how much attention they pay you and how nice they are as individual people. We will never meet them. We'll only ever get to give our money for the product they're prepared to let us have, and can actually make, not what they wish they could
make for us or you might dream of. Do your job, respect your audience, and report only on the facts, thank you.
I think these should be labeled OPINION pieces, rather than news / feature articles. It's clear and Red has admitted to it, that these are completely biased and serve no journalistic purpose except to convey an opinion without any thorough fact checking.
Portalarium have finally confessed that some of their screenshots are not from the game. Their latest Update #171 of that sweet looking Epic Male Armor now has this disclosure:
"NOTE: Sketchfab’s renderer is different than Unity’s, so assets may appear differently in game but our goal is to match in game visuals as closely to this as possible."
I think that doesn't go far enough and they need to label their screenshots as in-game or as concept rendering so that there isn't any misrepresentation of what players will experience.
Also, very good point above by Ice_Queen about the cloned scenes. That is misreporting or regurgitating new features without any clarity, fact-checking or basically, anything that you would even call journalism. Being as biased as you are, I think you've stopped asking questions. Even you agree that you are not the right person to write an official Review.
Which is why I think you need to clearly label these as Opinion pieces in the article title and in the body as a disclosure statement. I actually have nothing against you and enjoy your articles but it's a huge disservice to the readers of MMORPG if you continue to market these biased opinion pieces as news or feature articles without any journalistic integrity applied to them.
I think these should be labeled OPINION pieces, rather than news / feature articles. It's clear and Red has admitted to it, that these are completely biased and serve no journalistic purpose except to convey an opinion without any thorough fact checking.
Portalarium have finally confessed that some of their screenshots are not from the game. Their latest Update #171 of that sweet looking Epic Male Armor now has this disclosure:
"NOTE: Sketchfab’s renderer is different than Unity’s, so assets may appear differently in game but our goal is to match in game visuals as closely to this as possible."
I think that doesn't go far enough and they need to label their screenshots as in-game or as concept rendering so that there isn't any misrepresentation of what players will experience.
Also, very good point above by Ice_Queen about the cloned scenes. That is misreporting or regurgitating new features without any clarity, fact-checking or basically, anything that you would even call journalism. Being as biased as you are, I think you've stopped asking questions. Even you agree that you are not the right person to write an official Review.
Which is why I think you need to clearly label these as Opinion pieces in the article title and in the body as a disclosure statement. I actually have nothing against you and enjoy your articles but it's a huge disservice to the readers of MMORPG if you continue to market these biased opinion pieces as news or feature articles without any journalistic integrity applied to them.
Good callouts.
If Red wants to write more balanced articles, he could always choose to visit with the Portalarium folks and get more "facts". After all, he only lives a hop, skip, and a jump from their offices. Interestingly enough, so do most of the highest-tiered backers.
Oh, and a word of advice for those posting dissenting opinions: Screenshot your posts. Threads have a habit of disappearing when Portalarium is the subject matter, regardless of what site they're on.
Hey @Red_Thomas, how's that new camera/targeting/combat working out for you? lulz
Even some of the moderators are insinuating they'll leave over it. You can read all about it on th....
...or darn, deleted.
Oh wait. Nope. They just removed all the negative feedback and moved the thread to a forum where only players who spent $450 or more can see it. Color me surprised.
No worries. I have PDFs of the entire thread before the hacking and slashing. If anyone wants to read them, I'll post on Reddit.
I'm not the one who paid $1600 and then lied about "selling" it for $1800. I think i paid $35 on a Steam sale over the holidays which is about what I would pay for most games early on. Who's the whale now? See, like I said you bring nothing of value to the discussion. Lots of interesting stuff to discuss but you just want to spew vitriol.
Red, I do enjoy reading the articles and the news. I don't frequent their site often so it's nice to get your news reports.
I made the mistake of backing this... Not at all excited unless I get the option of having my pledge returned.. That would excite me.
Sell it now. You can get your money back. I got $1800 for my $1600 pledge. One of the whales will buy it to obfuscate the fact that only about 50 people actually play the game. There's a sucker born every minute.
Except everything that Torval said is true. You did say you paid $1600 and sold it for $1800. Then went on to say, "There's a suck born everyday." Pot meet kettle.
You can complain all you want but everything you bring to the table is moot. Anyone that is willing to spend $1600 on a video game and then complain about "whales" is an idiot, point blank. Honestly, it's just sad.
I made the mistake of backing this... Not at all excited unless I get the option of having my pledge returned.. That would excite me.
Sell it now. You can get your money back. I got $1800 for my $1600 pledge. One of the whales will buy it to obfuscate the fact that only about 50 people actually play the game. There's a sucker born every minute.
You pledged $1600 to a project and then say, " There's a sucker born every minute." That's hypocrisy at it's finest.
I'm willing to admit I believed Garriott until I realized what a liar he really is. My bad.
My bad is someone spending $50 not someone spending $1600. That isn't your bad that you're an idiot.
I'm not the one who paid $1600 and then lied about "selling" it for $1800. I think i paid $35 on a Steam sale over the holidays which is about what I would pay for most games early on. Who's the whale now? See, like I said you bring nothing of value to the discussion. Lots of interesting stuff to discuss but you just want to spew vitriol.
Red, I do enjoy reading the articles and the news. I don't frequent their site often so it's nice to get your news reports.
I made the mistake of backing this... Not at all excited unless I get the option of having my pledge returned.. That would excite me.
Sell it now. You can get your money back. I got $1800 for my $1600 pledge. One of the whales will buy it to obfuscate the fact that only about 50 people actually play the game. There's a sucker born every minute.
Except everything that Torval said is true. You did say you paid $1600 and sold it for $1800. Then went on to say, "There's a suck born everyday." Pot meet kettle.
You can complain all you want but everything you bring to the table is moot. Anyone that is willing to spend $1600 on a video game and then complain about "whales" is an idiot, point blank. Honestly, it's just sad.
I made the mistake of backing this... Not at all excited unless I get the option of having my pledge returned.. That would excite me.
Sell it now. You can get your money back. I got $1800 for my $1600 pledge. One of the whales will buy it to obfuscate the fact that only about 50 people actually play the game. There's a sucker born every minute.
You pledged $1600 to a project and then say, " There's a sucker born every minute." That's hypocrisy at it's finest.
I'm willing to admit I believed Garriott until I realized what a liar he really is. My bad.
My bad is someone spending $50 not someone spending $1600. That isn't your bad that you're an idiot.
Get it all out over here, princess. Can't act like that on the SotA forums because your keepers will bitch-slap you into a time out. Do they tell you when to eat, sleep, and take a leak as well? What am I saying, of course they do. Such an obedient little white knight.
Just wanted to drop a note to say I asked about the difference between in-game shots I usually get dropboxed from the devs, and what it looks like when I'm in the client. I was told that there's a Saturation slider in the graphics settings. I haven't played with it yet, but I could see how timing shots to get lighting and tweaking saturation would make for better ones. Graphics options could definitely be better, I think. Not sure what the timeline is on more advanced options, though.
Haven't really played with it much yet, but said I'd get back to you and wanted to make sure I followed up.
Comments
Ok, thanks for the explanation, but I was specifically referring to the depth-of-field effect as depicted in the screenshot. The new male avatar model is in R28 -- just not the depth-of-field effect. So perhaps that feature isn't in the build we have yet. Or they took a screenshot of the model outside of the game but in Unity or some special build they have which renders the avatar with much higher quality, with infinitely better lighting, and with depth-of-field effects.
Perhaps we got an early sneak peak at how the game will look with DX11/DX12 support, which is coming soon according to their Q2 schedule.
Your sides should be splitting from laughter right now.
~~ postlarval ~~
I support the game and the vision of what it will be at release. The devs do work hard and they have been making some good changes as of late. They are impeccable when it comes to getting servers up on time with new releases and keeping downtime very limited. I look forward to playing this game for years, but this part of your article is a bit misleading.
They are crunched for time and had to take other scenes already in game and paste them to these new scenes. I think I know what you're talking about they can make the same scenes look a bit different without a lot of work though, like Kingsport and Solania, that made them look different. The scenes that got a lot of work, like Skrekk look excellent though.
I know they plan to go back to these scenes later on to fix them to be unique scenes of their own and I don't have a problem with that, they're crunched for time, but that one part about how so many scenes were added so quickly could have been a bit more clear. Great article though.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
It's been more than a week now and there are only a few comments from a few people. The SotA forums are pretty slow, and the same names come up repeatedly there too. Newcomers are chased out by those who've been there since the beginning. Those who dissent have their accounts banned. If you complain, you get negative feedback, ganked, and kicked from the forums.
Because the game has not improved in such a long time, interest has plummeted. In addition, Steam ratings repel people who might otherwise have been interested. And I'd say it's for good reason.
The graphics are nice, the male character improved, with plans for other characters. But why? Each scene is a ghost town, tiny, and unbalanced. It's just not worth playing.
If you own no property, the game is truly not worth it, even for that "tiny" investment people are discussing here.
As the comments below show, you clearly were not aware that the screenshots shown, which are still branded from "SotA" and are almost certainly pre-provided to you, are not currently possible in the R28 build. Your duty is to either play the game "as is" and report on what the actual experience you have was, which would be honest reviewing, or make quite clear the associated media in this positivity piece is from Portalarium, and is a statement of intention, reporting on the claims themselves, and not what the players can expect now.
And where are your own screenshots, taken during your own play time? Did you actually play SotA Release 28, and if not, why not?
In particular, SotA is still not optimised even for monster systems like my own; what sort of system would be required to run the rendering in those screen shots on top of what it already struggles with? You can't know, as the public has no access to that engine build yet, so why is this article under "Features", and not "Hype" when you clearly haven't actually tested any of the features you list, indeed many of them are just taken word for word from the press releases as future aims, not current features?
Why should your audience here, which is your primary duty as an employee of the webpage remember, trust the marketing screenshots you use, especially when even larger development teams are quite happy to pull an Alien Colonial Marines on the public and never release the higher rendered game engine they used?
You work for us, your readers, not Portalarium, no matter how much attention they pay you and how nice they are as individual people. We will never meet them. We'll only ever get to give our money for the product they're prepared to let us have, and can actually make, not what they wish they could
make for us or you might dream of. Do your job, respect your audience, and report only on the facts, thank you.
Portalarium have finally confessed that some of their screenshots are not from the game. Their latest Update #171 of that sweet looking Epic Male Armor now has this disclosure:
"NOTE: Sketchfab’s renderer is different than Unity’s, so assets may appear differently in game but our goal is to match in game visuals as closely to this as possible."
I think that doesn't go far enough and they need to label their screenshots as in-game or as concept rendering so that there isn't any misrepresentation of what players will experience.
Also, very good point above by Ice_Queen about the cloned scenes. That is misreporting or regurgitating new features without any clarity, fact-checking or basically, anything that you would even call journalism. Being as biased as you are, I think you've stopped asking questions. Even you agree that you are not the right person to write an official Review.
Which is why I think you need to clearly label these as Opinion pieces in the article title and in the body as a disclosure statement. I actually have nothing against you and enjoy your articles but it's a huge disservice to the readers of MMORPG if you continue to market these biased opinion pieces as news or feature articles without any journalistic integrity applied to them.
If Red wants to write more balanced articles, he could always choose to visit with the Portalarium folks and get more "facts". After all, he only lives a hop, skip, and a jump from their offices. Interestingly enough, so do most of the highest-tiered backers.
Oh, and a word of advice for those posting dissenting opinions: Screenshot your posts. Threads have a habit of disappearing when Portalarium is the subject matter, regardless of what site they're on.
~~ postlarval ~~
Even some of the moderators are insinuating they'll leave over it. You can read all about it on th....
...or darn, deleted.
Oh wait. Nope. They just removed all the negative feedback and moved the thread to a forum where only players who spent $450 or more can see it. Color me surprised.
No worries. I have PDFs of the entire thread before the hacking and slashing. If anyone wants to read them, I'll post on Reddit.
~~ postlarval ~~
Except everything that Torval said is true. You did say you paid $1600 and sold it for $1800. Then went on to say, "There's a suck born everyday." Pot meet kettle.
You can complain all you want but everything you bring to the table is moot. Anyone that is willing to spend $1600 on a video game and then complain about "whales" is an idiot, point blank. Honestly, it's just sad.
Then you come back with this. My bad is someone spending $50 not someone spending $1600. That isn't your bad that you're an idiot.
Get it all out over here, princess. Can't act like that on the SotA forums because your keepers will bitch-slap you into a time out. Do they tell you when to eat, sleep, and take a leak as well? What am I saying, of course they do. Such an obedient little white knight.
~~ postlarval ~~
Just wanted to drop a note to say I asked about the difference between in-game shots I usually get dropboxed from the devs, and what it looks like when I'm in the client. I was told that there's a Saturation slider in the graphics settings. I haven't played with it yet, but I could see how timing shots to get lighting and tweaking saturation would make for better ones. Graphics options could definitely be better, I think. Not sure what the timeline is on more advanced options, though.
Haven't really played with it much yet, but said I'd get back to you and wanted to make sure I followed up.