5 years later and no Beta?

CantPlayHockey

I'm beginning to wonder, with giving out refunds and no Beta ETA is the writing on the wall?

The game looks ok enough even though the combat is rather basic and it doesn't really bring anything new to the MMO genre

I guess only time will tell, I was really hoping for something I'd be able to buy and play by now.

Viper482

Last time I logged into the client I was extremely disappointed with where it was at. I still have hope, just the hype dropped to zero for me over the years. I won't ask for a refund, I still believe in the team....even if it takes a couple more years.

Elminzter

the writing was on the wall, when they decided to built their own engine, therefore they bite off more than they could chew.., they could have learnt lessons from past mmorpg failures e.g. shadowbane, great game but letdown by a crappy engine poor latency making sieges mostly a lag fest, game was fun when there's no lag but once it lagged its GG!!!

my 2 cents

Thane

give mark some time, don't force him to repeat what EA forced him to do with WAR

uh, and the lag is one of the reasons this takes longer than building an unreal engine or unity game. none of those engines can support the numbers mark and his boys and girls want to achieve

http://camelotunchained.com/v3/beta-1/

pantaro

Thane said:

give mark some time, don't force him to repeat what EA forced him to do with WAR

uh, and the lag is one of the reasons this takes longer than building an unreal engine or unity game. none of those engines can support the numbers mark and his boys and girls want to achieve

http://camelotunchained.com/v3/beta-1/

exactly,which is why im highly amused by some of these other posts. everyone wants a quality mmorpg experience but the majority dont wanna wait for it. CU and mark jacobs are about the only mmo in dev that i have 100% faith in and this is coming from someone who isnt even a huge fan of PvP games.

I had to learn to accept the fact that no themepark mmo is ever gonna give me what i want in an MMO

Scorchien

lol yes, especially considering that even years after release MJ and his team still could not fix War , lol EA really forced him lmao ...

  Altho i like War at its core they were many things wrong with it an MJ was a big part of what was wrong , compounded by his lies and deceit to a community .. Then ran away ...The videos and interviews are still avaible on the internet ... its not a good look ...
 
      Hence why i am very skeptical as they can deliver all that MJ and his team is promising again , but i wait and see..... We have been down this road before ... 

  The silence is deafening tho

Wizardry

I need to see the game in action,i can't properly rate a game and it's mechanics based on some wording.

I'll look at a main component "combat".

I see good thought and ideas but still misses out in a couple areas.

The system i assume will be all player controlled,i don't like that with complicated systems,it becomes more who is better with a controller or mouse/KB than actual smarts.This is yet another reason i believe we cannot mix pvp and pve in a rpg.Player controlled instead of auto attack works in fps arena type combat or military with sniper rifles and grenades etc etc but not in a rpg.


Ok so some cool ideas like targeting specific points,does this really work?NOPE comes down to rng,guessing or just playing the safest way to perhaps protect your arms to keep dexterity and attacking while not worrying about movement or running,this is what i see happening.

Then there is the other aspect...cooldowns,so you get that super long boring strafing combat,swing then avoid then run away and wait for cooldowns to reset.Cooldowns are needed in games but again not in this pvp type of setting.

Then another aspect TYPE of damage,type of armor then i assume weighs in on movement/agility ,dexterity etc etc,almost impossible to balance it.Dual stats from dual wield,ALWAYS becomes the more powerful,especially with systems to raise the caps.
SPEED of attacks,to keep it real bigger  weapons should be slower,how could that be balanced?

Bottom line is in a chivalry type pvp system,i would be too frustrated at every corner with the design for pvp,i would like "bah that's dumb or that's not right"or it is simply unbalanced and soon everyone is a dual wielding speed demon.

Kajidourden

Yeah it's looking more and more like this won't see the light of day.  Crowfall on the other hand....(similar idea, executed differently) is actually looking great.

TalulaRose

Stop buying founders packs, stop giving these people money period. 

If someone needs to explain why then just just spend money on games that are finished and out the door. You will be happier for it.

meddyck

The delay and slow progress is very frustrating, but I don't have any sense that the game is actually in danger of not launching ("the writing is on the wall"). I fully expect Beta 1 to begin later this year (2018) and launch to happen within the next 2-3 years.

It's still too early to say whether all the many concepts Mark and Ben have come up with will mesh into a fun game. That's something that we'll be waiting on for a while longer.

cameltosis

Always surprises me when I see this sort of criticism, but I think it comes from a place of ignorance more than anything else. I personally think Mark and CSE are doing a great job, and whilst I'm frustrated at the delay, I'm frustrated because I really want to play the game and can't. 


Looking at the development history of CU, there are only two big mistakes that I can see that the team made but could have avoided. 

1) Location - Mark chose a location to setup his studio which isn't known for games development so he had a hard time staffing up. Whilst he anticipated some difficulty, he didn't anticipate just how difficult it was. This added a large delay to the development that could have potentially been avoided. 

2) Re-abilitation - something went wrong with their ability system that caused them to have to rewrite it, setting them back almost a year. I don't know the absolute specifics but it feels like this issue could have been caught earlier or anticipated earlier. That said, they did find the issue and instead of sticking with a slightly broken system like other developers, they took the hit and fixed it. 



The people saying that developing their own engine is a mistake.....lol! That is the single most sensible thing they've done! The overwhelming majority of MMOs use shit engines that aren't suited to being massively multiplayer. They crumble as soon as you get 50+ people in teh same area! Creating your own engine is very difficult, sure, and it's time consuming, but it means that CU will actually be able to handle massively multiplayer gameplay. 


To those saying Crowfall is looking in much better shape....on the surface, yes. By picking an off-the-shelf engine, Crowfall has been able to deliver content quicker. But, it's going to fall over in PvP. Once you start hitting 100 people, Crowfall is gonna grind to a slideshow on an average PC, precisely because they're using an off-the-shelf engine. Looking deeper, the core design of Crowfall means it is setting itself up to be a flavour-of-the-month game. I've no doubt the first couple of months will be successful, but their game design lacks depth and long term appeal and will end up punishing new PvPers very quickly, thus choking off their supply of new blood. 




Mark and his team will deliver. They've been open and honest throughout their development. They are tackling the hard issues within the genre. They're developing features never seen before, so it's actually exciting. The scope of their project actually matches their budget, unlike most other indie MMOs. What they've built so far has been impressive enough to attract actual investors. CU will never be a runaway success, but it was never meant to be. It will be a solid, niche PvP MMO that delivers what it said it will. 

Thomas2006

Scorchien said:

lol yes, especially considering that even years after release MJ and his team still could not fix War , lol EA really forced him lmao ...

  Altho i like War at its core they were many things wrong with it an MJ was a big part of what was wrong , compounded by his lies and deceit to a community .. Then ran away ...The videos and interviews are still avaible on the internet ... its not a good look ...
 
      Hence why i am very skeptical as they can deliver all that MJ and his team is promising again , but i wait and see..... We have been down this road before ... 

  The silence is deafening tho

I don't get how you can say the silence is deafening. They guy does a QA on twitch just about every week where he answers just about every question that is asked in real time without an vetting.

If anything the open development about what they are working on and what his ideas are for the game is a refreshing change in the industry.

Its going to take time before the game is release that is for sure. But they have already put a giant step forward with there own engine showing tests of truely massive groups of people fighting. And it only gets better each week with as bugs are fixed and things are tweaked to work even better.

Sovrath

If regular mmo's using off the shelf engines, from large development companies take 3-4 years (or more) to make, why is there any issue or fretting? That's not to say that the game is guaranteed to release but 3 years? That's nothing.

And I should add that I did give money.

Viper482

Elminzter said:

the writing was on the wall, when they decided to built their own engine, therefore they bite off more than they could chew.., they could have learnt lessons from past mmorpg failures e.g. shadowbane, great game but letdown by a crappy engine poor latency making sieges mostly a lag fest, game was fun when there's no lag but once it lagged its GG!!!

my 2 cents

Ummm..... you are making a case for them building their own engine....

PottedPlant22

I know that on one of the streams they talked about having to redo the code for the combat they wanted to do.  The impression I got is that they had to kind of start over from scratch because there was a lot of junk code that was hindering development.  I think that set them back by about a year, if not longer.

Viper482

Scorchien said:

lol yes, especially considering that even years after release MJ and his team still could not fix War , lol EA really forced him lmao ...

  Altho i like War at its core they were many things wrong with it an MJ was a big part of what was wrong , compounded by his lies and deceit to a community .. Then ran away ...The videos and interviews are still avaible on the internet ... its not a good look ...
 
      Hence why i am very skeptical as they can deliver all that MJ and his team is promising again , but i wait and see..... We have been down this road before ... 

  The silence is deafening tho

What silence? I get regular updates from the team.

Sovrath

Scorchien said:

  The silence is deafening tho

There are updates from them, in my e-mail box from:

11/30
12/8 & 12/13 with live stream schedule
12/15 & 12/18 with their live stream schedule
2 for 12/22 though one is a sort of "Happy Holidays" thing

I could go on but there is absolutely no silence.

what more? 11/28, 11/22 thankgiving thing, 11/20

it just continues.

Blackboa

The team at Camelot Unchained is among the most transparent out there.  Every day they show their development of the game on their twitch channel, and on Friday's you get a chance to ask your questions directly to Mark and the devs.  I highly recommend going in and asking some questions of your own if you have any doubts about the game.  Their channel is https://www.twitch.tv/citystategames.  A big announcement is expected at the end of January, so we will see what is on the horizon.

wormed

Pretty happy that I took a refund about a year ago.

Sovrath

Sovrath said:

Scorchien said:

  The silence is deafening tho

There are updates from them, in my e-mail box from:

11/30
12/8 & 12/13 with live stream schedule
12/15 & 12/18 with their live stream schedule
2 for 12/22 though one is a sort of "Happy Holidays" thing

I could go on but there is absolutely no silence.

what more? 11/28, 11/22 thankgiving thing, 11/20

it just continues.

Not to belabor the point but one just came in for the Jan 2- 8th streaming schedule.

Elminzter

Viper482 said:

Elminzter said:

the writing was on the wall, when they decided to built their own engine, therefore they bite off more than they could chew.., they could have learnt lessons from past mmorpg failures e.g. shadowbane, great game but letdown by a crappy engine poor latency making sieges mostly a lag fest, game was fun when there's no lag but once it lagged its GG!!!

my 2 cents

Ummm..... you are making a case for them building their own engine....

well, they need lots of funds and time to iron out all the problems, but do they have time or the funds to achieve their goals..., by the time they release beta the world has already moved on to something better, so they will always play catch up till their funds run dry...

Sovrath

Elminzter said:

Viper482 said:

Elminzter said:

the writing was on the wall, when they decided to built their own engine, therefore they bite off more than they could chew.., they could have learnt lessons from past mmorpg failures e.g. shadowbane, great game but letdown by a crappy engine poor latency making sieges mostly a lag fest, game was fun when there's no lag but once it lagged its GG!!!

my 2 cents

Ummm..... you are making a case for them building their own engine....

well, they need lots of funds and time to iron out all the problems, but do they have time or the funds to achieve their goals..., by the time they release beta the world has already moved on to something better, so they will always play catch up till their funds run dry...

I don't think it's the case where the world will have moved on to something better.

This is not a high profile, trendy, "What's happenin' now" ultra hyped to the masses video game. The audience for it is rather small and probably experienced Dark Age of Camelot at some point. Or Warhammer. They are looking for a very specific experience.

Money is the biggest issue. That ties in with time. But, as I said above, it's only been 3 years.

bcbully

Sovrath said:

Elminzter said:

Viper482 said:

Elminzter said:

the writing was on the wall, when they decided to built their own engine, therefore they bite off more than they could chew.., they could have learnt lessons from past mmorpg failures e.g. shadowbane, great game but letdown by a crappy engine poor latency making sieges mostly a lag fest, game was fun when there's no lag but once it lagged its GG!!!

my 2 cents

Ummm..... you are making a case for them building their own engine....

well, they need lots of funds and time to iron out all the problems, but do they have time or the funds to achieve their goals..., by the time they release beta the world has already moved on to something better, so they will always play catch up till their funds run dry...

I don't think it's the case where the world will have moved on to something better.

This is not a high profile, trendy, "What's happenin' now" ultra hyped to the masses video game. The audience for it is rather small and probably experienced Dark Age of Camelot at some point. Or Warhammer. They are looking for a very specific experience.

Money is the biggest issue. That ties in with time. But, as I said above, it's only been 3 years.

Agreed. 3 non mirrored factions? That doesn’t get old. Would I love to see it in March, hell yeah. I can wait though.

meddyck

Sovrath said:

Elminzter said:

Viper482 said:

Elminzter said:

the writing was on the wall, when they decided to built their own engine, therefore they bite off more than they could chew.., they could have learnt lessons from past mmorpg failures e.g. shadowbane, great game but letdown by a crappy engine poor latency making sieges mostly a lag fest, game was fun when there's no lag but once it lagged its GG!!!

my 2 cents

Ummm..... you are making a case for them building their own engine....

well, they need lots of funds and time to iron out all the problems, but do they have time or the funds to achieve their goals..., by the time they release beta the world has already moved on to something better, so they will always play catch up till their funds run dry...

I don't think it's the case where the world will have moved on to something better.

This is not a high profile, trendy, "What's happenin' now" ultra hyped to the masses video game. The audience for it is rather small and probably experienced Dark Age of Camelot at some point. Or Warhammer. They are looking for a very specific experience.

Money is the biggest issue. That ties in with time. But, as I said above, it's only been 3 years.

Plus the difficulty they had hiring programmers for the first few years means they haven't spent as much money during that time as originally planned. They should be fine for money for the foreseeable future (not forever).

Sovrath

I should probably correct my "three years" - obviously 5 years.

Now, if we hit the 7 year mark (no pun intended) then I think questions can be raised, especially if there is no beta.

Copperfield

lol people complain about crappy mmo's now when something is actually produced from nothing they start complaining it takes to long..

patience my young one... this mmo will last forever