I think it's a grand game as well. Not since SWG Pre-NGE have I experienced the same lovely vibe of my character embarking upon a world whose possibilities are wide open to her. I didn't even know how much I missed that feeling until I played The Repop for the first time, it brings so much of it back to me.
The repopulation is the next torch holder, just like Archeage was previously....These games always come in extremely overhyped and always under deliver.
I think the game is relatively fun, it has a lot of things in it that I enjoy, but it also has really bad combat. So once they polish the combat a bit more than it will be a lot better for me.
@op that was a big long rant about an unfinished game that does not have all the features added in yet. Come back when its finished and if you still dont like it then fair enough..
I love TR, and I'm having great fun playing it, but I also have some serious reservations about it.
The game systems are orders of magnitude more complex than today's "mainstream" MMO's. It would require some truly brilliant game design to make an adequate tutorial to convey the complexity in "5 easy steps". Because unless you can miraculously condense it all into a brief fact-filled (and fun) tutorial, 90% of average MMO'ers are going to be hopelessly lost and confused. And overwhelmed. And uninstalled...
I'm not at all convinced that the Hero engine is going to work for TR. Quite frankly, it currently doesn't. Hero obviously expects to have a loading screen between game zones. TR's design requires that there are no loading screens. 90% of my very frequent CTD's involve crossing zone boundaries. Will the builders of Hero be prepared to make the required adjustments (and investment) to their engine to allow it to run open-world games effortlessly ? They've not done it in the last 13 years, why would they do it now ? It's not like there's a huge customer base of open-world sandbox games waiting to use Hero engine...
This game would otherwise put a check in all my boxes. But I have 2 major concerns.
1. Will items purchased from the cash shop be tradeable with other players? Because if they are, it means this player driven economy, and by extension, virtually everything in the game, will be governed by the cash shop and those who use it most.
2. This is an indie game with a small development team planning to launch a F2P title. This has the makings of another ArcheAge launch written all over it. The game's best days are in its alpha / beta days. After that the cheaters, hackers, botters, spammers and sellers will flood this game like a swarm of locusts and I have to wonder if this team can prepare for that.
2. This is an indie game with a small development team planning to launch a F2P title. This has the makings of another ArcheAge launch written all over it. The game's best days are in its alpha / beta days. After that the cheaters, hackers, botters, spammers and sellers will flood this game like a swarm of locusts and I have to wonder if this team can prepare for that.
Well, to be fair to said indie dev. team... even in the AAA MMOs that have released, it literally, and I do mean literally, takes several months before they get a handle on all the cheats and hacks and spam and such. So, it'd be kind of unfair to expect a small team to prevent it from happening when the big companies cannot.
But, yeah, if they are never, ever able to fix the problems, then that'd be quite an issue.
@GeezerGamer: Sorry for slow response, I don't check in here all that often. But answers to your questions.
1. No. Stuff in the shop will either be self only or account wide perks. 2. Every MMO has to deal with those issues. We have a variety of auto and manual detection schemes already in place.
@GeezerGamer: Sorry for slow response, I don't check in here all that often. But answers to your questions.
1. No. Stuff in the shop will either be self only or account wide perks. 2. Every MMO has to deal with those issues. We have a variety of auto and manual detection schemes already in place.
1. Thank you for that. Limiting RMT to self/account only, cuts down on the economy manipulation.
2. It's not about what happens to TR at launch because it's as you said, "Every MMO has to deal with those issues" How much better is your auto detection system going to be than "Every MMO's"? As far as manual, that can become overwhelming for a small indie team launching a F2P title. I'm sorry, if I don't believe you are going to have many resources available to manage this as most of your staff will be "All Hands On Deck" just keeping your servers online smoothing out all the technical issues during launch. ANd that would be if it was a P2P title. But this is F2P so on top of that you will also be facing an army of people who are reverse engineering you, and with an endless supply of accounts at their disposal, they can simply employ a process of elimination until they find a method that lets them bypass your measures.....even if temporarily, even then, then they come back and try again.
That said, I do believe you will get a handle on it eventually as most MMOs do. It's just unfortunate that the time that it's at it's worst is also the worst possible time. (And yes, that's for Every MMO)
This game would otherwise put a check in all my boxes. But I have 2 major concerns.
1. Will items purchased from the cash shop be tradeable with other players? Because if they are, it means this player driven economy, and by extension, virtually everything in the game, will be governed by the cash shop and those who use it most.
2. This is an indie game with a small development team planning to launch a F2P title. This has the makings of another ArcheAge launch written all over it. The game's best days are in its alpha / beta days. After that the cheaters, hackers, botters, spammers and sellers will flood this game like a swarm of locusts and I have to wonder if this team can prepare for that.
2. No they wont. A game needs to be successful to draw in a lot of hackers, botters and gold sellers. This game is not going to be successful.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling." - Michael Bitton Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about." - SEANMCAD
@GG: I can't speak for what schemes other MMOs are using, but it's generally not hard to detect players who are cheating. We use an auto detection and cut off scheme for areas that we can and it tends to work pretty well. Clever players will find ways to work around it but they are often easily detectable through the server logs. We often don't ban players now, we give them a timeout, or in the cases we let them go and put a study log on them to help us build better methods for auto-detection. But our approach is very different to them, where most companies identify, study, then ban, our approach is to automate and build solutions which try to reduce or eliminate a players games in a way that makes it hard for them to notice.
You certainly can't stop players from botting or cheating. That is impossible. What you can do is reduce or remove the benefits of doing so.
It's counter-productive to ban cheaters in a F2P game until they have a time investment. There's really no penalty in that when they can make a new account. But if you detect a player as a cheat you can cut off or reduce their skill gains, reduce their qualities of loot, etc in the short term (they are flagged). And then ban them once they have invested enough time into their character that it hurts. People bot or cheat in MMOs either for personal gain (to get ahead) or for monetary gain (RMT sites). If you reduce the benefit of cheating in the short term and then ban them before they can ever truly capitalize then you create an environment where its easier for them to just move on to a game where they can see more benefit.
If a company charges money for a product, then that company is welcoming any and all criticism of that product.
But on the other hand... If you don't like a game and don't care about it, yet spend a lot of time trashing it in comments, what is that called?
Criticism =/= Trolling. I've yet to see fans of any MMO able to tolerate people who are guilty of the sin of disliking the game they like.
Someone who dislikes a game is allowed to make a topic citing the reasons they dislike it. If that annoys people who can't handle reading a negative opinion of their game, perhaps that defensive reaction is due to them not liking the game as much as they want others to think.
So how many times does it take to go from criticism to spamming? Say it once and move on...
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
@GG: I can't speak for what schemes other MMOs are using, but it's generally not hard to detect players who are cheating. We use an auto detection and cut off scheme for areas that we can and it tends to work pretty well. Clever players will find ways to work around it but they are often easily detectable through the server logs. We often don't ban players now, we give them a timeout, or in the cases we let them go and put a study log on them to help us build better methods for auto-detection. But our approach is very different to them, where most companies identify, study, then ban, our approach is to automate and build solutions which try to reduce or eliminate a players games in a way that makes it hard for them to notice.
You certainly can't stop players from botting or cheating. That is impossible. What you can do is reduce or remove the benefits of doing so.
It's counter-productive to ban cheaters in a F2P game until they have a time investment. There's really no penalty in that when they can make a new account. But if you detect a player as a cheat you can cut off or reduce their skill gains, reduce their qualities of loot, etc in the short term (they are flagged). And then ban them once they have invested enough time into their character that it hurts. People bot or cheat in MMOs either for personal gain (to get ahead) or for monetary gain (RMT sites). If you reduce the benefit of cheating in the short term and then ban them before they can ever truly capitalize then you create an environment where its easier for them to just move on to a game where they can see more benefit.
I've been sitting on the fence about the early access, but I keep falling back on my rule of thumb which is to wait and see what is actually released. It wasn't long ago that ArcheAge was in Beta for NA and these boards were lit up with how it was going to be a game changer based on how it played in Beta......then it released. But at the same time I can also understand that even if there are changes from beta to release, they aren't supposed to be negative.
All the same, I am in the wait and see group on this one. I can wish for the best, and hope it really is the game it's advertized to be. But if it doesn't produce........well, no loss on my end. Now that I have said that, I look back at AA and think, even with the games rapid decline post launch, for many the Alpha / Beta period was time well spent. And that is why I keep coming back debating with myself to give this a shot. But I think I'll wait for a little more development progress before I make up my
We all complain when every new game that launches is a themepark. We all complain when a game tries to make us pay a sub fee for access to alpha/beta testing We all complain when game devs dont talk to us
Then, when a small indie company tries to do something different we only get more complaining. Is the release date probably going to get pushed back? Most likely. Can you get a copy of the game for as low as $15 to jump in and play it now/forever? Yep. Do the devs communicate and even post on forums other than their own? Yep.
Its still being worked on, its not released yet and the pricing seems to reflect this. I cant complain until I see the finished/released product. JC-Smith said:d want to clear up any confusion there. There is no offline prog
I really wanted this game to do well and even bought a founder pack or whatever the trendy name is for a pre-order now. Honestly, I forgot this game was even in my steam library at this point. Development just seemed painfully slow and the game seemed very clunky. They had some really great ideas for this game and I guess if you wanted to pattern your game after something SWG is not a bad choice. I think it just shows that you can't really make a high quality MMORPG on the shoestring budget they have to work with. This game started funding back in 2012 if I remember. I don't see any hope of it releasing in 2015 and even 2016 might be pushing it. I would have loved to see what they could have done with a better engine and a real budget but I think the reality is that it just isn't going to happen. I respect these guys for doing as much as they did with what little they had to work with but I'm not really expecting some break out hit. I'd love to be wrong but I'm long over having unrealistic hopes for games based on nostalgia and feels. All that got me in the past was a bunch of junk games and a lighter wallet.
I really stopped at reading after some columns.. but i ahve played Repopulation, and i personally still believe in this one.
It seems that someone forgot that Repopulation is still in ALPHA! Man C'mon!
It's not even in beta... UI? Optimization?
Wait... )))
Beta and the UI, you still need the basic functions and the basic layout to get started with the UI...I design game Interfaces for a living, and yes Repop is in beta, but they were lacking from day 1 with the UI aspects and never listen to anyone when it comes to the basics.... They will continue to have issues until they hire a few people who actually made games before, and maybe has a degree in game development, I mean give me a break...Beta or not you need the basics.... They are lacking in that in those areas...Now in other areas I feel they are doing ok in...But with todays gamers they whine so much, about everything, they will not last with some of the stuff I seen, and I was in beta early on..until it was closed down...Unreal, yes great engine, but if they are having UI issues with Hero, oh boy, they need to find someone who understands, flow charts, and Game User interface design or they are screwed... That does not include some of there other issues.. that the OP pointed out..
I agree with the UI, being a someone who works with Game UI's , professionally, I have said it many times to them, but falls on deaf ears..Not my game, if they choose not to listen..
While the title of the thread seems a bit careless, I read the long original post and found it to be a very intelligent critique of the problems that exist in the foundational level of Repopulation. I was recently puzzled when a friend of mine reported that he didn't like Repop after playing it, and besides bugs, described the same disconnect that you detailed.
I think that Repop has enough surface resemblance to SWG to make it engaging for someone looking for a sandbox, but the outer framework suffers from too many wrong turns in trying to make the game have its own identity.
One of the first things I noticed in early testing was the defensive attitude of the people involved when comparisons to SWG are made and a deficit reported. When it comes to positive comparisons the relationship is welcomed, but if you voice anything to the contrary, groupthink and the excuse: "wrong game," will emerge. I don't believe they can have their cake and eat it too.
-The auction house thing needs to go. With such huge possibilities for a player run economy they need to remove the next minute air option. Goods to Market needs to be part of the equation, as well as having different markets.
-The Plot Housing thing was ill-conceived. Once again MMO devs have fallen into the trap of preserving their story by stifling yours. I don't give a fuck if the aliens spawn close by, open world housing needs to be in there or it's just a slightly more immersive version of instanced housing. Put decay and inhabitation in there if you don't want clutter. It's a simple matter to make abandoned structures pack up and to not let maintenance be paid for 5 years in advance. What they have done has essentially made the world smaller by sectioning it off into large unusable bits.
-The UI is just plain shitty. Design, Implementation, symbology, customization. The UI actually takes me out of the game because it seems to fight the other visuals, and often wins. Where target indicator/con is concerned the look is gaudy, too colorful, and not helpful.
I think that there is a lot of potential in the game, and I think that once it launches it will be something I play regularly. The main thing with Repop is that it is not a casual game nor do I think it will be. It's a game that will require large investments of time and because of that I can forgive the things like the hard leveling of the armor skills and the attachments. A good amount of tutorial should be spent explaining those things to new players though so they don't feel unduly attacked by the system.
I also think that the team should put in things like backpacks, true open world housing, and harvesters that don't just go on a node. I guess once you have that control you want to make the thing that you envision, but some of those choices could be remade for the betterment of the player experience.
Comments
The game systems are orders of magnitude more complex than today's "mainstream" MMO's. It would require some truly brilliant game design to make an adequate tutorial to convey the complexity in "5 easy steps". Because unless you can miraculously condense it all into a brief fact-filled (and fun) tutorial, 90% of average MMO'ers are going to be hopelessly lost and confused. And overwhelmed. And uninstalled...
I'm not at all convinced that the Hero engine is going to work for TR. Quite frankly, it currently doesn't. Hero obviously expects to have a loading screen between game zones. TR's design requires that there are no loading screens. 90% of my very frequent CTD's involve crossing zone boundaries. Will the builders of Hero be prepared to make the required adjustments (and investment) to their engine to allow it to run open-world games effortlessly ? They've not done it in the last 13 years, why would they do it now ? It's not like there's a huge customer base of open-world sandbox games waiting to use Hero engine...
1. Will items purchased from the cash shop be tradeable with other players? Because if they are, it means this player driven economy, and by extension, virtually everything in the game, will be governed by the cash shop and those who use it most.
2. This is an indie game with a small development team planning to launch a F2P title. This has the makings of another ArcheAge launch written all over it. The game's best days are in its alpha / beta days. After that the cheaters, hackers, botters, spammers and sellers will flood this game like a swarm of locusts and I have to wonder if this team can prepare for that.
But, yeah, if they are never, ever able to fix the problems, then that'd be quite an issue.
1. No. Stuff in the shop will either be self only or account wide perks.
2. Every MMO has to deal with those issues. We have a variety of auto and manual detection schemes already in place.
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.
But combat.
2. It's not about what happens to TR at launch because it's as you said, "Every MMO has to deal with those issues" How much better is your auto detection system going to be than "Every MMO's"? As far as manual, that can become overwhelming for a small indie team launching a F2P title. I'm sorry, if I don't believe you are going to have many resources available to manage this as most of your staff will be "All Hands On Deck" just keeping your servers online smoothing out all the technical issues during launch. ANd that would be if it was a P2P title. But this is F2P so on top of that you will also be facing an army of people who are reverse engineering you, and with an endless supply of accounts at their disposal, they can simply employ a process of elimination until they find a method that lets them bypass your measures.....even if temporarily, even then, then they come back and try again.
That said, I do believe you will get a handle on it eventually as most MMOs do. It's just unfortunate that the time that it's at it's worst is also the worst possible time. (And yes, that's for Every MMO)
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
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You certainly can't stop players from botting or cheating. That is impossible. What you can do is reduce or remove the benefits of doing so.
It's counter-productive to ban cheaters in a F2P game until they have a time investment. There's really no penalty in that when they can make a new account. But if you detect a player as a cheat you can cut off or reduce their skill gains, reduce their qualities of loot, etc in the short term (they are flagged). And then ban them once they have invested enough time into their character that it hurts. People bot or cheat in MMOs either for personal gain (to get ahead) or for monetary gain (RMT sites). If you reduce the benefit of cheating in the short term and then ban them before they can ever truly capitalize then you create an environment where its easier for them to just move on to a game where they can see more benefit.
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.
So how many times does it take to go from criticism to spamming? Say it once and move on...
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
All the same, I am in the wait and see group on this one. I can wish for the best, and hope it really is the game it's advertized to be. But if it doesn't produce........well, no loss on my end. Now that I have said that, I look back at AA and think, even with the games rapid decline post launch, for many the Alpha / Beta period was time well spent. And that is why I keep coming back debating with myself to give this a shot. But I think I'll wait for a little more development progress before I make up my
We all complain when a game tries to make us pay a sub fee for access to alpha/beta testing
We all complain when game devs dont talk to us
Then, when a small indie company tries to do something different we only get more complaining. Is the release date probably going to get pushed back? Most likely. Can you get a copy of the game for as low as $15 to jump in and play it now/forever? Yep. Do the devs communicate and even post on forums other than their own? Yep.
Sinister Savant MMORPG Community
That being said, sometimes, on smaller teams andon tighter budgets, people have to wear many hats.