Well there is a perspective view we need to take when looking at different games.
This was predominantly 1 person and or 2 people,him and her.
Not a lot can be done with a mmorpg with such a small team and lack of funds,it is a daunting task,imo an impossible task. Where he went wrong however is in his decisions and those are similar to every other game development studio.
Once he got a design down and started to make the game,he never FINISHED much.I can't say a nything because some areas could be considered finished,example the class structure/abilities.However the game world and assets and reasons for character existence were and are not finished.
The problem like every business is he needed or seemed to cater to a few people,always trying to keep them interested.So he moves on with new zones without finishing the old ones.Then when a zone IF it was finished needs to be polished,example nicer textures,animations,perhaps give npc's more to do ,more interaction etc etc. To put it in laments terms ,he did a good job of starting a game design but that is where it seems to end. You see a mmorpg is a massive game and NEEDS to be to be any good.That is why we have moba's and crap little games,so that small teams and few people can toss them out in a year or less.A MMORPG needs 7 years of a full team to be a quality game and nobody is doing that right now,hence why i have been so negative and disappointed.Bottom line is "don't bite off more than you can chew".
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I played Progect Gorgon for about a year in the beginning, even posting comments about the game here and inviting others to try. Manged to chat with the developer in game and offered some comments about the game. This is mainly a one man game . I think he has his girlfriend/wife? and a friend working with him but mainly it is him.
The problem is funds, of course. He doesnt have a lot of money. However, he has done great with what he has. It was such a hoot being able to play a Cow psychologist for instance. You were able to mix and match different and unique skills. You were able to be a mycologist and study and grow different mushrooms and make cheese. All those little touches for an RPG type player were terrific. Ultimately , where the game failed for me was, as stated above, horrible graphics even after he claimed he was improving them. I couldn't tell a difference. Also, I was never a huge fan of the awkward combat and that big box that you had to deal with when fighting. He had grand plans for the game and when I heard the whole story I realized it would never likely be realized given the mostly one man development team and funds available.
and many many other games that are years ahead of this junk
Having played all of these that's not true at all. At least if you are talking about the world/game play.
I don't like the whole "Cow thing" at all and it's a huge turn off, but there is quite a lot of detail in Project Gorgon.
Now, if all you are looking at are graphics (read "graphics" not "art design") and smart animations, then sure, you would be correct (though EQ2 is abysmal with its running animations - talk about junk).
My advice would be to try it before you that Guild Wars 2, Rift and Everquest 2 are years ahead of project gorgon because that's not necessarily true.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
The graphic isn't the best but it isn't the worst either. Heck, people play Minecraft and its graphic is objectively worse than PGs.
As others have mentioned you have to take into account that this a more or less 1 man project. Those titles you (op) mentioned had teams for each and every task he does.
I don't know the numbers for those games but I recently read that Star Citizen (a game in and above the mentioned games price range) has about 300 people working for them world wide. Let's assume they have 250 people coding and creating assets. Now think about it, this one guy would have to work 250 YEARS to create the same kind of game as the current king of Kickstarter does each year! And they have been at it for 3-4 years now. That's a millennium for 1 person.
So from my point of view it is amazing that he could great a game that has a deep skill system, good enough graphics, a fully functional multi zone MMO world, a NPC system that is different from the norm, and a combat system that is while not perfect very deep.
Sure he didn't finish each and every aspect of (last I checked) even the first zone (after the intro island) and the graphic changes were minor but you have to take into account that at the same time he was working on new assets(= create mesh, texture, animation, check interaction, repeat), armor/item/skill stats and all the other stuff (i.e. new systems as in flying, new skills). I assume that if he had done what people in this thread had wanted, completing a zone, and finish each and every aspect of it before moving on to the next then there would be 1 zone and people would complain about lack of zones.
tl;dr: The biggest problem of PG is math and it would have taken ahuge amount of funds to make the graphics high end, AAA, BDO style with the content it has.
I think game has come along quite well considering the amount of people that are working on it. It has older game concepts and some interesting newer ones I haven't seen before. I mean you can level up as cow... a cow.
i NEVER had a problem with the graphics,i have been way more worried about zone work,making frame rates the way they SHOULD be for low end graphics. IDK exactly what is going on but somehow i get the feeling Eric is NOT getting the proper feedback he needs to improve the game.
I would not spend one single minute on graphics,they are doable,fine,acceptable,the entire rest of the game however needs work,including a LOT more assets.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Well there is a perspective view we need to take when looking at different games.
This was predominantly 1 person and or 2 people,him and her.
Not a lot can be done with a mmorpg with such a small team and lack of funds,it is a daunting task,imo an impossible task. Where he went wrong however is in his decisions and those are similar to every other game development studio.
Once he got a design down and started to make the game,he never FINISHED much.I can't say a nything because some areas could be considered finished,example the class structure/abilities.However the game world and assets and reasons for character existence were and are not finished.
The problem like every business is he needed or seemed to cater to a few people,always trying to keep them interested.So he moves on with new zones without finishing the old ones.Then when a zone IF it was finished needs to be polished,example nicer textures,animations,perhaps give npc's more to do ,more interaction etc etc. To put it in laments terms ,he did a good job of starting a game design but that is where it seems to end. You see a mmorpg is a massive game and NEEDS to be to be any good.That is why we have moba's and crap little games,so that small teams and few people can toss them out in a year or less.A MMORPG needs 7 years of a full team to be a quality game and nobody is doing that right now,hence why i have been so negative and disappointed.Bottom line is "don't bite off more than you can chew".
Yeah, I thought the same thing when I was first looking into it. At first it was "Wow, such a small team is doing all this? Impressive!".
Then as I started playing it, and saw how janky, arbitrary and out of sync so much of it feels - conceptually, not just in terms of "being incomplete because it's in development - my perspective changed.
I started to think "Such a small team trying to do all this, all at once? What are they thinking?"
I've gone back a number of times, including just a few days ago. The graphics look nicer. They're using better looking assets for sure. But the whole game still gives me the impression that the developer is, in some ways, "winging it" on the design (the "ideas on paper" part, not the programming part). It just strikes me as a bunch of random ideas shooting off in a bunch of different directions.
I admire the effort, and there are some very good ideas - enough to produce a solid sandbox title with enough variety to suit to a wide variety of players. It just feels way too unfocused, random and "overboard" at this point, to me. I feel there's a lot of "fat" that could be trimmed off of it - at least for now - so a more focused, core experience can be completed, polished and released. Then, maybe later, those weirder, sillier, more random "fringe" ideas can be re-implemented.
It feels like they're trying to include everything and the kitchen sink; like a hobby project, where they're just cramming every random idea they've ever had into it, however arbitrary or random, just because there's no one to tell them "No".
Comments
This was predominantly 1 person and or 2 people,him and her.
Not a lot can be done with a mmorpg with such a small team and lack of funds,it is a daunting task,imo an impossible task.
Where he went wrong however is in his decisions and those are similar to every other game development studio.
Once he got a design down and started to make the game,he never FINISHED much.I can't say a nything because some areas could be considered finished,example the class structure/abilities.However the game world and assets and reasons for character existence were and are not finished.
The problem like every business is he needed or seemed to cater to a few people,always trying to keep them interested.So he moves on with new zones without finishing the old ones.Then when a zone IF it was finished needs to be polished,example nicer textures,animations,perhaps give npc's more to do ,more interaction etc etc.
To put it in laments terms ,he did a good job of starting a game design but that is where it seems to end.
You see a mmorpg is a massive game and NEEDS to be to be any good.That is why we have moba's and crap little games,so that small teams and few people can toss them out in a year or less.A MMORPG needs 7 years of a full team to be a quality game and nobody is doing that right now,hence why i have been so negative and disappointed.Bottom line is "don't bite off more than you can chew".
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The problem is funds, of course. He doesnt have a lot of money. However, he has done great with what he has. It was such a hoot being able to play a Cow psychologist for instance. You were able to mix and match different and unique skills. You were able to be a mycologist and study and grow different mushrooms and make cheese. All those little touches for an RPG type player were terrific. Ultimately , where the game failed for me was, as stated above, horrible graphics even after he claimed he was improving them. I couldn't tell a difference. Also, I was never a huge fan of the awkward combat and that big box that you had to deal with when fighting. He had grand plans for the game and when I heard the whole story I realized it would never likely be realized given the mostly one man development team and funds available.
I realize you are working with everything God gave you , and he may of accidently shortchanged you , But try harder next time ..
I don't like the whole "Cow thing" at all and it's a huge turn off, but there is quite a lot of detail in Project Gorgon.
Now, if all you are looking at are graphics (read "graphics" not "art design") and smart animations, then sure, you would be correct (though EQ2 is abysmal with its running animations - talk about junk).
My advice would be to try it before you that Guild Wars 2, Rift and Everquest 2 are years ahead of project gorgon because that's not necessarily true.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
As others have mentioned you have to take into account that this a more or less 1 man project. Those titles you (op) mentioned had teams for each and every task he does.
I don't know the numbers for those games but I recently read that Star Citizen (a game in and above the mentioned games price range) has about 300 people working for them world wide. Let's assume they have 250 people coding and creating assets. Now think about it, this one guy would have to work 250 YEARS to create the same kind of game as the current king of Kickstarter does each year! And they have been at it for 3-4 years now. That's a millennium for 1 person.
So from my point of view it is amazing that he could great a game that has a deep skill system, good enough graphics, a fully functional multi zone MMO world, a NPC system that is different from the norm, and a combat system that is while not perfect very deep.
Sure he didn't finish each and every aspect of (last I checked) even the first zone (after the intro island) and the graphic changes were minor but you have to take into account that at the same time he was working on new assets(= create mesh, texture, animation, check interaction, repeat), armor/item/skill stats and all the other stuff (i.e. new systems as in flying, new skills). I assume that if he had done what people in this thread had wanted, completing a zone, and finish each and every aspect of it before moving on to the next then there would be 1 zone and people would complain about lack of zones.
tl;dr: The biggest problem of PG is math and it would have taken ahuge amount of funds to make the graphics high end, AAA, BDO style with the content it has.
I got more enjoyment out of it than many AAA MMOs.
IDK exactly what is going on but somehow i get the feeling Eric is NOT getting the proper feedback he needs to improve the game.
I would not spend one single minute on graphics,they are doable,fine,acceptable,the entire rest of the game however needs work,including a LOT more assets.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Then as I started playing it, and saw how janky, arbitrary and out of sync so much of it feels - conceptually, not just in terms of "being incomplete because it's in development - my perspective changed.
I started to think "Such a small team trying to do all this, all at once? What are they thinking?"
I've gone back a number of times, including just a few days ago. The graphics look nicer. They're using better looking assets for sure. But the whole game still gives me the impression that the developer is, in some ways, "winging it" on the design (the "ideas on paper" part, not the programming part). It just strikes me as a bunch of random ideas shooting off in a bunch of different directions.
I admire the effort, and there are some very good ideas - enough to produce a solid sandbox title with enough variety to suit to a wide variety of players. It just feels way too unfocused, random and "overboard" at this point, to me. I feel there's a lot of "fat" that could be trimmed off of it - at least for now - so a more focused, core experience can be completed, polished and released. Then, maybe later, those weirder, sillier, more random "fringe" ideas can be re-implemented.
It feels like they're trying to include everything and the kitchen sink; like a hobby project, where they're just cramming every random idea they've ever had into it, however arbitrary or random, just because there's no one to tell them "No".
Just my impressions of it.