The technical demonstrations and tests they put on for backers. Like the massive ARC test with over 2k clients. Or the cherry keep siege.
I hope you're aware of the fact that most of those "clients" were simulated. Despite promises of their engine being able to handle "500 players in same area" - it was actually never tested with that many live players. Not to mention another fact that the tests with "simulated clients", including their "Cherry Keep" BS, were done in a mostly empty, small areas, before they started to populate areas with additional vegetation and additional structures.
Current areas in game (with current amount of vegetation and structures) produce frequent rubberbanding and random hitching even with 5 live players in same area. I know because I can actually participate in them (I just played the current build on Friday). And based on my first hand experience I am absolutely not impressed by any "technical demonstrations" and I don't consider many people at CSE as "talented" enough, especially after seeing bad animations, bad AI pathfinding, bad art assets and their placement in current version of game, bad performance in current version of game even with few people, atrocious lighting system, lack of proper physics and collision system (try to run through any vegetation in current version of game and see what happens), lack of good music and sound effects, lack of good animations, lack of basic "quality control" (there are billions of "invisible holes" in current build of the game, indicating that absolutely no one at CSE bothers to check for such simple things) and lack of everything else that even more simple games such as Valheim (a game made by 5 people) have. When I played Valheim (which is still in "Early Access") - I did feel like I was playing a game made by talented developers, but each time I logged into Camelot Unchained - I felt like playing a tech demo hastily assembled by talentless, unmotivated hacks.
The technical demonstrations and tests they put on for backers. Like the massive ARC test with over 2k clients. Or the cherry keep siege.
I hope you're aware of the fact that most of those "clients" were simulated. Despite promises of their engine being able to handle "500 players in same area" - it was actually never tested with that many live players. Not to mention another fact that the tests with "simulated clients", including their "Cherry Keep" BS, were done in a mostly empty, small areas, before they started to populate areas with additional vegetation and additional structures.
Current areas in game (with current amount of vegetation and structures) produce frequent rubberbanding and random hitching even with 5 live players in same area. I know because I can actually participate in them (I just played the current build on Friday). And based on my first hand experience I am absolutely not impressed by any "technical demonstrations" and I don't consider many people at CSE as "talented" enough, especially after seeing bad animations, bad AI pathfinding, bad art assets and their placement in current version of game, bad performance in current version of game even with few people, atrocious lighting system, lack of proper physics and collision system (try to run through any vegetation in current version of game and see what happens), lack of good music and sound effects, lack of good animations, lack of basic "quality control" (there are billions of "invisible holes" in current build of the game, indicating that absolutely no one at CSE bothers to check for such simple things) and lack of everything else that even more simple games such as Valheim (a game made by 5 people) have. When I played Valheim (which is still in "Early Access") - I did feel like I was playing a game made by talented developers, but each time I logged into Camelot Unchained - I felt like playing a tech demo hastily assembled by talentless, unmotivated hacks.
As one of the other 5 people online every now and then I think you are pretty forgiving of the game. Or, well, I could think that, NDA and all
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
What is amazing is they could take so long to deliver so very little, yet still keep the doors open.
Guess it helps that their investor group was led by family.
Part of the reason (other than having rich relatives) they are able to keep on going is that Mark hires people who, due to their lack of motivation or lack of talent (depending on a person), do not ask for large salary in exchange for the job they do at CSE. He did an interview back in 2015 with TenTonHammer where he said:
"This team, starting with Andrew, could make more money elsewhere. On the open market, Andrew could make a heck of a lot more than at our studio, same for everyone else. It’s not that you have to take this or else you can’t work on the game, it’s that this is what we have to work with and in exchange I’m giving you a big piece of the company and sharing the profits like I did at old Mythic"
What is amazing is they could take so long to deliver so very little, yet still keep the doors open.
Guess it helps that their investor group was led by family.
Part of the reason (other than having rich relatives) they are able to keep on going is that Mark hires people who, due to their lack of motivation or lack of talent (depending on a person), do not ask for large salary in exchange for the job they do at CSE. He did an interview back in 2015 with TenTonHammer where he said:
"This team, starting with Andrew, could make more money elsewhere. On the open market, Andrew could make a heck of a lot more than at our studio, same for everyone else. It’s not that you have to take this or else you can’t work on the game, it’s that this is what we have to work with and in exchange I’m giving you a big piece of the company and sharing the profits like I did at old Mythic"
This is his exact quote.
I dunno... I think he is saying that they take less in salary but own a piece of the company.. so to me that gives me MORE reason to work hard and make the game a hit since I will share in the profits.
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
Well, as you can see this clearly isn't motivating enough. Especially if a person didn't care for company profits share in first place but agreed to work for them for low salary simply because she/he was too lazy to find higher paying job elsewhere
Either way, it's a clever way to lower company's expenses.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Dark Age of Camelot cost 2.5 million and only 3 years to build.
All they had to do was take Dark Age of Camelot and make it over in Unreal 4 Engine.
I never played Dark Age of Camelot. I played Asheron's Call 1 then basically gave up on MMO's after that.
World of Warcraft held my interest for about 6 months after it came out then that was it for me.
Dark Age of Camelot cost 2.5 million and only 3 years to build.
All they had to do was take Dark Age of Camelot and make it over in Unreal 4 Engine.
I never played Dark Age of Camelot. I played Asheron's Call 1 then basically gave up on MMO's after that.
World of Warcraft held my interest for about 6 months after it came out then that was it for me.
Welcome to the forums. Recall though at launch DAOC was very bare bones, only had 20 levels initially, and the upper level zones of Hibby land are quite sparse compared to the other two realms.
I think however, Mythic had some development talent which lead to it's success which aren't with Mark today.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I think however, Mythic had some development talent which lead to it's success which aren't with Mark today.
Well, Mark still has Andrew Meggs, who is a mastermind behind the development of their custom engine and who is a genuinely talented person. Though even Andrew hasn't mentioned anything regarding Camelot or the Unchained engine for over a year on his Twitter, so I dunno, maybe he also lost interest in it...
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Yeap, they abused not only the trust of original backers but also the government Payroll Protection Program, by taking out loans which they never intended to repay, one of which is already marked as "forgiven" on public website which lists all these loans to all companies.
Though to be fair, they're not the only company to do so. For example, did you know that Intrepid Studios, the company that is lead by Steven Shariff and develops Ashes of Creation, also took "free" loans from Payroll Protection Program, even though Steven Shariff supposedly has enough personal money to pay for Ashes of Creation development?
I don't get the 10 years of development, it's not entirely clear to me what they are coding that can take so long. I work in software development and a 10 year project.. that's a lot of lines of code. Even if you were developing your own engine it still shouldn't take that long.
With MMORPGs a big part is the art and world design.. a lot of that you can scale and outsource though to get what you need.. but the weird part in all this is that I don't see the worlds/lands being built.. I don't see cities being built, dungeons being created or talked about.
Base on progress it feels like this games has been about a year in development.. but 10 years.. wtf is going on?
I don't get the 10 years of development, it's not entirely clear to me what they are coding that can take so long. I work in software development and a 10 year project.. that's a lot of lines of code. Even if you were developing your own engine it still shouldn't take that long.
With MMORPGs a big part is the art and world design.. a lot of that you can scale and outsource though to get what you need.. but the weird part in all this is that I don't see the worlds/lands being built.. I don't see cities being built, dungeons being created or talked about.
Base on progress it feels like this games has been about a year in development.. but 10 years.. wtf is going on?
They basically keep having to start over after exploring development pathways that didn't pan out as well as they thought they would.
The passage of time forces some rework as well as the development landscape of 2022 is vastly different from when they first started out 9 years ago.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Dark Age of Camelot cost 2.5 million and only 3 years to release.
They only needed to make Dark Age of Camelot use the Unreal 4 Engine and launch it with all brand new graphics.
Instead they got 10 year old vaporware
Game is still pre-alpha, the fact they call it a beta is absurd.
Considering how companies will keep games on Steam in "Early Access" for literally years, so they - and their defenders - can say "well it's not in full release yet!", it doesn't surprise me at all.
Mark saying CU is in Beta sounds, to me, like he's trying to cover himself on both sides. "We're making progress! We're in Beta! But... It *is* still Beta so, you'll have to understand it still needs work!"
I hope you're aware of the fact that most of those "clients" were simulated. Despite promises of their engine being able to handle "500 players in same area" - it was actually never tested with that many live players. Not to mention another fact that the tests with "simulated clients", including their "Cherry Keep" BS, were done in a mostly empty, small areas, before they started to populate areas with additional vegetation and additional structures.
I am not aware of this "fact". To my knowledge and according to official information, these are not simulated clients, but ARCs, i.e. autonomous remote clients. In simple words, CSE booted up thousands of virtual machines, equipped each with a CU client and had them connect to the server. Each of these virtual machines was also equipped with a script that generated random movements and capability inputs. The only difference to a human was that the input generated by the script was greater on average.
And yes, the Cherry Keep map was smaller, but the aim of the test was also a performance showcase including building destruction: the keep itself had 14 million blocks as far as I can remember, there were 200 trebuchets, 800 other siege weapons and about 1k ARCs and players.
Current areas in game (with current amount of vegetation and structures) produce frequent rubberbanding and random hitching even with 5 live players in same area. I know because I can actually participate in them (I just played the current build on Friday).
I have also tested the current version: I personally, but also others I have spoken to, have not experienced any rubberbanding. And this despite the fact that I play on an AMD system, which is currently suffering from considerable performance losses.
All they had to do was take Dark Age of Camelot and make it over in Unreal 4 Engine.
CU is not planned as a successor to DAoC, and even if they wanted to, they don't have the licence for it.
About the engine: At first they tested commercially available engines like Unity or UE, but concluded that the necessary modifications were not worth it, hence the in-house engine.
Yeap, they abused not only the trust of original backers but also the government Payroll Protection Program, by taking out loans which they never intended to repay, one of which is already marked as "forgiven" on public website which lists all these loans to all companies.
I don't understand this kind of mentality. Why is it "abuse" for small businesses to apply for PPP? I mean, that's exactly what the program is for. Besides, there are rules and if they are not complied with, the money has to be paid back.
Comments
Current areas in game (with current amount of vegetation and structures) produce frequent rubberbanding and random hitching even with 5 live players in same area. I know because I can actually participate in them (I just played the current build on Friday). And based on my first hand experience I am absolutely not impressed by any "technical demonstrations" and I don't consider many people at CSE as "talented" enough, especially after seeing bad animations, bad AI pathfinding, bad art assets and their placement in current version of game, bad performance in current version of game even with few people, atrocious lighting system, lack of proper physics and collision system (try to run through any vegetation in current version of game and see what happens), lack of good music and sound effects, lack of good animations, lack of basic "quality control" (there are billions of "invisible holes" in current build of the game, indicating that absolutely no one at CSE bothers to check for such simple things) and lack of everything else that even more simple games such as Valheim (a game made by 5 people) have. When I played Valheim (which is still in "Early Access") - I did feel like I was playing a game made by talented developers, but each time I logged into Camelot Unchained - I felt like playing a tech demo hastily assembled by talentless, unmotivated hacks.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
"This team, starting with Andrew, could make more money elsewhere. On the open market, Andrew could make a heck of a lot more than at our studio, same for everyone else. It’s not that you have to take this or else you can’t work on the game, it’s that this is what we have to work with and in exchange I’m giving you a big piece of the company and sharing the profits like I did at old Mythic"
This is his exact quote.
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
Either way, it's a clever way to lower company's expenses.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
All they had to do was take Dark Age of Camelot and make it over in Unreal 4 Engine. I never played Dark Age of Camelot. I played Asheron's Call 1 then basically gave up on MMO's after that. World of Warcraft held my interest for about 6 months after it came out then that was it for me.
I think however, Mythic had some development talent which lead to it's success which aren't with Mark today.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Though to be fair, they're not the only company to do so. For example, did you know that Intrepid Studios, the company that is lead by Steven Shariff and develops Ashes of Creation, also took "free" loans from Payroll Protection Program, even though Steven Shariff supposedly has enough personal money to pay for Ashes of Creation development?
With MMORPGs a big part is the art and world design.. a lot of that you can scale and outsource though to get what you need.. but the weird part in all this is that I don't see the worlds/lands being built.. I don't see cities being built, dungeons being created or talked about.
Base on progress it feels like this games has been about a year in development.. but 10 years.. wtf is going on?
The passage of time forces some rework as well as the development landscape of 2022 is vastly different from when they first started out 9 years ago.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Considering how companies will keep games on Steam in "Early Access" for literally years, so they - and their defenders - can say "well it's not in full release yet!", it doesn't surprise me at all.
Mark saying CU is in Beta sounds, to me, like he's trying to cover himself on both sides. "We're making progress! We're in Beta! But... It *is* still Beta so, you'll have to understand it still needs work!"
It's about as opaque as an open window.
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
About the engine: At first they tested commercially available engines like Unity or UE, but concluded that the necessary modifications were not worth it, hence the in-house engine.
I don't understand this kind of mentality. Why is it "abuse" for small businesses to apply for PPP? I mean, that's exactly what the program is for. Besides, there are rules and if they are not complied with, the money has to be paid back.