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Still waiting for a real sandbox
shogunone
Member Posts: 85
A very good post by Batallie in the customer section..
http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/58672-still-waiting-real-sandbox.html
It pretty much sums up MO as it is now and how it released. It is a long read but it is well worth it. But if you would like to jump to his conclusion.
Conclusion:A game devoid of real tools and options does not promote player freedom, but player boredom. In a game featuring ffa PvP and little else, bored players means pointless, and ultimately boring, PvP being the center of everything. Which is fine in a PvP deathmatch game. Thing is, if I want a PvP deathwatch game, there are several other, better titles to chose from. MO was supposed to be a sandbox, but it has mostly failed to deliver so far. I'm still waiting for the game I wanted to play, but I'm not so sure I will for much longer.
There is also a post in the thread from bodangly saying that we should expect this because UO released in the same state. First I do not agree with that UO was a lot of fun and it developed fast. But are we really compairing a game that launched in 95 to one that launched in 2010 and expect it to be shit??? I hope we have made improvements in hardware and software since then.
But please read it is a good post by a long time supporter of MO. NO hater or fanboi propaganda in the thread.
Comments
Really good post, which sums up the issues with MO from a realistic view. It is not about it being buggy or server going down every day, neither is it about exploits and lack of content. It is about completely wrong design and development decisions. I liked the core design part of the post, which sums up why MO keeps grinding my gear. There is just so much wrong with it, yet it is entertaining to see how this ugly duckling develops.. even thou I doubt it will end the same way as the infamous fairytale.
I'm keeping my eye on ArcheAge.
Just crossed Earthrise off the list.
Someone needs to do something soon, my wife says it's baby time.
I understand his disapointment, I hardly follow MO or even DF anymore, those games just don't develop in true sandbox games they were suppose to be.
The UO argument is true, but the problem is that developing a game from year 95 took much less lines of code, money and time then a game from 2010. That's the main reason why SV is struggling ( except their lack of experience ) and I doubt wll manage to deliever.
Patience is running out even in case of the really hardcore MO fanatics.
And it's not like the competition was particularly fierce back then either.
Always read the small print.
Hard to guess how ArcheAge will turn out. Could be interesting.
You could also look into Xsyon. I just bought it out of curiousity and what I've read about it. Logged in yesterday for about 15 minutes. I had a log stuck on my back and didn't know how to get it off. LOL. I logged out and re-rolled another toon real quick. My 15 minutes in game is not much to base a review on though. Maybe just read up on it.
I did realize however, that there is a lot to learn about that game and I definitely need to read the manual and write down the commands before I log back in. It seems like crafting will be a huge part of that game. There is also ffa pvp but there are supposed to be consequences. Also, pvp is not a main feature.
This is all what devs have said and not from my own experience of course.
I'm going to go read the manual and log back into Xsyon. Good luck with your next sandbox.
@OP - Thanks for posting. I played MO for six days and decided to check back later to see...
Xsyon-- if you find the development problems fo MO frustrating, you'll probably find this one more frustrating. SV has a small team all based in Malmo, Sweden. Notorious games has a team about the same size split between the Nevada http://nvsos.gov/SOSEntitySearch/CorpDetails.aspx?lx8nvq=W1oJns2JW%252bBNmN6RPcIusw%253d%253d&nt7=0 and Novosobirsk, Russia.
Earthrise-- well, we are seeing how that cookie crumbles right now.
Archeage-- sounds good, much of the description of systems is far too vague to assess at this point.
If you are not satisfies with the current offerings, here's something from a company that knows it's sandbox games...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1v3rONmizs
Not sure where you got the quote Osmunda, but the point made is false -- older games usually have *more* code to do the same work than newer games. It's a matter of using more object oriented programming, newer tools, and overall less work.
For SV, their codebase is laughable because the bulk of the code lies in an engine they purchased. All they are doing is scripting events on top of that engine. That's why they hired Sebastian, a guy who isn't anything close to a real programmer to do the work as "lead programmer". The only part of the game that actually required real programming skill was actually made by SOMEBODY ELSE, a fan based patcher for a game that you're paying money for.
It's really a sad story.
It is sad that player that made the patcher also did all the new work on their website and is doing all the flash in the game. I do not know why they just do not hire him and move him to Malmo.
I am sorry but after my MO and SV experience I will never give money to another inexperienced small indie dev team. I will wait till the game is out and working.. I have been watching Earthrise, Xyson, Dawntide and they all look like more Indie Sanboxes that will release in the same state MO did. I do not want to repeast that same mistake. I will not play a game on "potential". MO has been out almost 8 months now and please go to the forums and "potential" is the fule people play on. If I wanted to play on potential I would be subbed to 20 games right now.
I do play EVE that is the only sandbox out right now that I will call a sandbox. And I can not wait for World of Darkness. I played Vampire when I was young and I am totally versed in the lore. It will be a new sandbox develpoed by an experienced team with the money to do it. CCP is a company I trust to flesh out a sandbox. I do not want to hear about how EVE started and how it sucked in the beggining. I played MO from beta till a couple weeks ago and it has not made any vast improvements since beta. They have been working on PVP since then and still do not have it right. They are not making money to fix the game. And all I hear is lies and promises from one of the slickest salesmen I have had the displeasure meeting (Henrik). I have seen so many things promised and not delivered, and or forgotten. Please look at the under developed scetion from the beggining. There are countless things said will be in game soon and dropped off and forgotten. Plus listening to Henrik in IRC is just so much of a con. He promises the world and gives you a pea and tells you it is the world.
henriks rebuttle... I guess as soon as the new network solution is laid down all will be fixed.
Sadly, there are not to much to discuss here on our end, but that we understand a few of the points here when it comes to some features. We have the same guild war system as UO had, and still has. With some added territory/siege features in a very basic form. We lack small but important feature such as forgive players in the assault list on a death, that affect the flagging system greatly, which we plan to add soon. We will see if it would do well with a “redeem” red status if the majority think it’s in its good place when we get the forgive system in place. We are like we mentioned working on trading tools and improving PVE of the game, which you start see progress of now in forms of an invasion on myrland that we got great feedback on so far. More ways of earning money for warriors via risars, that is also being expanded now each patch.
The general answer to why we are still working on some of our core feature such as movement is that we didn’t get the working network solution in time as planned, this delayed us for about 10 months which was valuable time lost for us as a small independent company. It was either put MO away or hand it over to a publisher that would crush its "hard core" features or do the best we could with what we had and release it a bit premature. You cannot imagine how much we struggled to get the core to work with MO as soon as we get the delivered network solution parts. We are still working day and night to get the lost time back. I mean that time was meant to go to other areas than trying to "solve" the lacking parts (making our own solution that were supposed to come along with the network solution). As we have a plan to follow and because we didn’t get what was planned in time, even though we had a long backup if something was to be delayed, we couldn’t expect such long delay on the deliver. We were forced to release somewhat early with some of the core parts not up to par where we wanted it sadly. We do see the light in the tunnel now however and will very soon be able to actually let combat and movement for instance to be like it is, giving us more room to fully focus on other areas that is needed now.
NizeGuy hit the nail here, we see this as well of course and have not spend much time on marketing the game in its current state. Not because there is nothing to do for new players. We are getting more and more positive feedback from a steady growing rate of new players and they are having a blast in this somewhat different mmo. But we want to feel confident with our core feature such as combat and movement and then let that be while we improve other areas with the entire team. It’s getting a catch 22, we need more players to get more resources to get what the players want at this time in a faster rate. At the same time we don’t want to mass market it until the core is more stable. And again in a mmo like this you can’t ever be happy with all areas, slowly improving, there is always something that can improve and expanded. So to set down the foot and say now it’s time to get in new players the base is good enough is very hard. Also current players that enjoy their time want to see more players in a faster rate, which require marketing or mouth to mouth marketing, which we still aren’t doing due to the core is still being tweaked on. We have been waiting for a long time to show MO to the world but we are slowly getting there. We had a long delay on the network solution that to this very minute is getting it last parts in place. The "voice" is slowly turning that we should accept new players now. There are lots of things to a new player to do for a good time before they get to the “end game” and starts joining a group of a few in this thread. But for us to be able to fully focus on that area and bring more meaning behind territory and trading we need to continue to grow in new players, which both you and we affect via marketing and how we spread MO over the internet.
We are as eager as you to be able to fully focus on the later areas that the majority wants now such as, trading tools, pve, social etc. And we are about to be able to put the entire team on that now since we think the core is about to get as good as it can for now with our coming patch. As long as its "ok" we will continue on the other areas because it is needed. With this in place we do start spread the game, which we chosen to kept a bit silent due to us struggling with the last part of the core within the network solution.
It’s easy just to listen to some guys saying we break new stuff and bring in old bugs along with our fixes and patches. But since the core part been replaced in the network solution it gives similar issues in a different way. We did have at a time, some time ago old bugs back due to the way the patches were compiled. But since that got in a proper pipeline that is not the case anymore. But the facts stands that we have been struggling with something that were supposed to be in place 10 months ago, giving us no other options that do our best day and night to be able to get MO out there, which we are happy that a lot of you do understand and support which been very important for us as well to have the energy to continue on this project. It’s not been easy but it’s well worth it when we also see a positive trend and feedback within our growing community.
I hope this clears some of the questions and give you a better idea on why we are where we are at this point, and that we can start take the next step very soon. We get tons of feedback at the moment, and we do see a very positive trend from both new and old players, that are increasing, and it’s in no doubt that we also have track on the areas that people want us to focus on. I believe that this will start growing faster when we start marketing/spreading the game as well. Both I and major publishers that we are in contact with are very amazed of the interest in our game and community without us spending anything on marketing. I think we have had a very good player base with us since launch that know what we are doing and what MO is about and also a good understanding for our somewhat chaotic release and patching phases. If we need to expand in a faster rate, and if we want more players in a faster rate we need to take some steps in marketing and let players know about Mortal Online. I have not yet met 1 stranger in either game, UO, AO, EVE, WOW, WaR that knows/heard about MO, so I started to wonder how did we get this many players without us marketing and still none knows about it in the other mmos on the market this far. When that change I think we will see a very large amount of new players flooding MO, many will of course leave when they find out MO is not for them. Its so easy to compare us to any other mmo on the market because most of them are developed and released by major companies with enormous budget. Players think that we have the same resources and can easy get confused within our game, because MO is different and it is supposed to be different, we are not trying to compete with WoW or do a good WoW clone that many major companies tries to beat today, for us it would be suicide. Even a few major game companies admitted that Star Vault did give their team and producers something to think about when they saw what we have done with the technology we use and the resources/team we have. Some of them couldn’t simply believe we did this on our own with our small team. We get the luxury of developing one of a kind MMO but it aint without extremely hard work putting it on the market was a huge step and it will only grow and get better over time now. I still see many similarities in how UO was released and what we are doing now, (they also started small, and I remember the release months in that game, it didn’t work at all, not even moving the first couple of weeks ? but it was the game that inspired me to create MO this many years later. The difference is indeed a few years and we have a somewhat more sophisticated graphics, but also new obstacles to struggle with when the game is built in 3D, first person view, a persistent, real time player actions without any instances or loading times.
Heh... yet another instance of blaming Epic games for all the problems with MO. I really have to wonder if he even read the OP he was replying to as 95% of his response was about Epic Games network code and the OP was really focused on the game DESIGN deficiencies...
I also wonder.. if all this is really Epic's fault then why hasn't Starvault sued them for non-delivery? If they had done so, wouldn't it have had to be included in one of their stock reports?
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
Henrick's next response is another slam on the product they received from Epic Games...
Quote:
Originally Posted by MasterCrafter
Henrik... your still making basic mistakes like not deleting info on a character after its been deleted leading to one character owning two guilds corrupting the guild data
Stuff like that is why your network code took 10 months to finish. Basic mistakes.
Not really, but I will enlighten you. We got the guild system within the network solution (how to handle player guilds in general, same way for all mmos). We simply used what we were told would work and well tested for many months (great for us, finally something really tested and created from a world leading developer, but they can also do mistakes and have bugs we found out). It turned out it wasn't fully water proof, which we are working on on our own because right now that ain't a high prio for Epic.
But how would you know this, you cant and we ain't blaming you for it. But this is just another common thing we have to prepare for and work with daily, there is nothing that is perfect and works when you get it, not even from the best developers in the world. Better to start preparing and do the best out of it.
__________________
Amazing that apparently nothing Epic gave them worked.. yet they still paid for it unless the next stock report has some unexpected news for us regarding their relationship with Epic Games...
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
A bad workman blames his tools.
Epic have provided plenty of help and support, working closely with SV during the "epic patch". Epic aren't going to do everything for SV though, they've got better things to do than build the game for them. If SV can't use the resources provided properly then that is their problem, and trying to lay the blame squarely at Epic's door, a company who have built a global reputation for the quality of their product, just smacks of desperation.
While the quote from Henrick is from the same thread noted in the OP it seems out of step with the general direction of this thread. If you want to focus on the role of Epic/ UE3/ Atlas in the current state of MO, I'd suggest a seperate thread with a title that made the main topic clear.
Sorry but discussing the Starvault CEO's direct response to the OP is certainly a relevent part of this discussion. Henrick is the one who responded to the complaints about content by saying the product received from Epic Games was the reason his game is lacking sandbox features. If someone randomly had introduced Epic games and the engine to the discussion I would agree, but this was done by the CEO himself and thus HIS response is certainly relevent.
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
Think Henrik and SV can light candles and praise God that they are so insignificant in the MMO world, nobody notices they even exist. Otherwise I'm sure Epic would be filing a lawsuit their way right about now.
say what you want, but its quite true that its epics fault for delaying and then sv tried to build their own code on whatever they had, and they been impervising.
game is pretty sweet now.
People were more forgiving in the UO era because MMO was new and people were excited at the prospects of a whole new game style. Now there is a new MMO every month it seems and players are much less forgiving for incomplete releases. There is really no excuse for releasing unfinished games these days. It makes companies look bad.
Ultima Online
Mystic of The Fallen Lords (Pacific 98-01)
Mystic of Catskills (03 - 08)
As for the quote, it's from blindchance's post, which is three posts before mine. Somehow I don't think that's what you mean by "quote", however, so I'll answer the other two issues you may have meant.
While MO was in development, you offered to redesign their forums. Personally, I think that indicates that you were a fan of MO while it was in development. I was just offering you as an illustration that the "milage may vary" Some people are lost with each design decision (i'm sure some people were lost with the decision to have a murder count) and with each problem that crops up in the game. Some are won over when they find out about the game and some are may be won back when their particular pet peeve gets addressed.
Older games may have more novel code than newer games, since much of the code in the new game is wrapped up in the engine, tools etc. This may mean less code unique to the new game, but it also means more complicated tools, which can be a lot harder to adjust when things don't operate as originally expected. Driving a car with automatic transtion is no more complicated than riding a ten speed bike (and arguably simpler), but when something goes wrong it's a lot more complicated to figure out and fix than on a bike.
Early in the development of MO, SV made the decision to use UE3 as the underlying framework. Whether, why and how this was a good or bad decision is beyond the scope of this thread, but the inescapable truth is, it has made SV dependent on the Epic games development cycle. ' It's left Star Vault spending too much time fixing their client, server, and engine issues and not devoting enough time to fleshing out the title itself -- a veritable "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario.' as Seraphina said.
To date, there are five MMORPGs/ L(arge)MORPS released using UE3: Crimecraft,DC Universe Online,Mortal Online,APB, and TERA (korea only). I'm unsure if any of the others use the UE3 networking solution (http://www.epicgameschina.com/tech/tech-atlas_overview.html) but MO is the only one using it to provide "seamless public world streaming" for the entire game (setting aside TERA for the moment since I dont line in Korea) All the others, are/were heavily instanced.
MO was conceived in 2002 but active development was started in March 2007 with the incorporation of Starvault. The production (and cost) of development was ramped up in anticipation of UE3 and the networking solution being ready on a certain schedule. Henrick merely stated that the network solution was delayed, causing them to burn through their development money earlier than they anticipated (relative to receiving a fuller implementation of Atlas) This can be framed as "blaming" Epic, but it can also be framed as accepting responsibilty for not anticipating/planning contingencies for such a delay.
Henrick concedes that some core mechanics are not quite where they want them to be yet and that they " want to feel confident with our core feature such as combat and movement and then let that be while we improve other areas with the entire team." However, due to finances "It was either put MO away or hand it over to a publisher that would crush its "hard core" features or do the best we could with what we had and release it a bit premature."
The core of the argument of the OP in the original thread is that PVP and combat mechanics are being focused on in a way that crowds out other sandbox content.(fishing, exploring, housing, tade, "fluff and vanity stuff" and social elements). One of the other games on the list did an awesome job on some of the fluff http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWOSxb7ONX4&feature=related but no so great on some core mechanics http://gameolosophy.com/games/rpg/warcraft/apb-drunk-driving-footage-released/ and we see where that got them.
It kind of doesn't matter what EpicGames did or didn't do with Starvault. Starvault picked Epic Games for the engine, knowing what the limitations of the engine were at the time they picked it.
I've started messing around with UE3 and there's no way I'd do a seamless MMO game with it. You're taking something that works great for a specific purpose and trying to make it work for something else. A screwdriver works great if you have 4 screws to screw in, but if you've got a garage to build, you get a power driver or a nail gun. You don't use a screwdriver.
It should have occurred to them that trying to write a full blown mmorpg would be a problem for them if they lacked the tools or the skills to build a base engine for the game.
I'm not sure any of that addresses the OP though. Try out Xsyon. Really. The game appears functional, is sandboxy like crazy and I have yet to see a post giving the game bad marks for implementation. It'll be interesting to see if it runs well after there are thousands of people playing or thousands of people in a single zone, but until then it fits the bill of Functional Sandbox.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
whats the limitations of the UE engine?
I am still waiting for a "sandbox" where PvP is not the main and only entertaiment. Whatever you do in MO atm, it is somehow connected to PvP, and it is what still keeps some people playing, the player politics and fights. That aint a sandbox for me, just a bit more advanced PvP game.