Wait, they're using Unity as a server back end, not just a game client? It struggles badly enough to handle simple loads as the latter. Server code should have so little in common with client code--and in particular, no need for video, audio, a GUI, or most other things that a game engine handles for you--that it's hard to imagine how that could be a good idea.
I'm actually shocked that you of all people would make this comment. Perhaps your knowledge is purely hardware and I should not have expected you to understand software more.
First of all Unity handles client side stuff well when developed competently. Second there is no reason why it wouldn't be used on the server as well.
It's not like you have renderers running on the server.
You don't have cameras.
You don't have audio.
You don't have mesh.
Aside from running all of the logic with the necessary components like colliders, servers are much, much lighter than the clients. Regardless of the engine used.
There's no reason why server code has to be particularly related to client code. You don't need to use the same programming language or even the same operating system. The only compatibility needed between the server and client is that each needs to be able to parse the packets sent over the Internet by the other.
There is a general rule in programming that you don't want to create unnecessary dependencies, as it will inevitably come back to bite you in weird and unexpected ways. Unless there is some Unity server software that I'm unaware of, using a game engine with a ton of client stuff for your server code sure sounds like a ton of unnecessary dependencies. It also sounds like it came back to bite them hard--and this will hardly be the last time.
If you want to use C# for your server code, then that's fine. You can use C#. But that doesn't mean that you should use Unity for it. They may have wanted to grab a couple of little things from the Unity engine, but creating huge dependencies just so that you can grab a couple of little things from libraries is nearly always a bad idea.
As for my performance comment, nearly every game that uses Unity that I've ever played felt like it had a horrible case of being badly coded. Various things that you'd expect a game engine to do for you felt broken (especially a weird inability to run the game windowed with a reasonable window size), and things that should have been fast and efficient carried huge performance hits. I've rarely seen similar problems from games that didn't use Unity.
Correlation doesn't imply causation, but strong correlations are pretty suggestive. I don't know if the problem is the Unity engine itself, or if it tends to attract bad programmers and repel good ones for some reason. An engine that makes it possible for bad programmers to do things badly rather than being unable to do anything at all could have the same effect without being a bad engine in itself.
You're correct that what a game server has to do for one player is massively simpler than what the client has to do. The critical difference is that the server has to do what it does for all of the players at once. The client only has to do it for one player. A game engine that is built around the assumption that it only has to handle things for one player is likely to behave strangely if you try to use it for a server.
Everything client related is stripped out of the server regardless of what engine you use. If it's not then it's on the developer, not the engine.
It's not necessary to have the same code on the engine as on the client, but there are many reasons to do so, most of which include not building the same things twice in different languages. Don't Repeat Yourself. It's a lot simpler in the long run to manage one code base then two.
If you're not going to use Unity on the server then you need to figure out how you're going to build the world in the first place. If you use Unity to build the world then you need to figure out how to export the world so the server knows where the static world is. It needs to know this for collisions. If you want NPCs then you need to decide how you're going to handle their navigation. Navmeshes and collisions are already built into the engine. If you're not using unity to build the world then you need to get that world into Unity for the client to use.
Unity screwed up with their development tiers and most, if not all of the games that have the splash screen "Made with Unity" are on the free tier and those that paid also removed the splash screen. Huge mistake IMO. Since "made with unity" is only associated with the free tier games it's easy to only associate it with completely trash games.
Unity screwed up with their development tiers and most, if not all of the games that have the splash screen "Made with Unity" are on the free tier and those that paid also removed the splash screen. Huge mistake IMO. Since "made with unity" is only associated with the free tier games it's easy to only associate it with completely trash games.
That's interesting, but my comment that Unity games seem to be badly coded isn't just restricted to no-budget indie games. Is Kerbal Space Program a trash game made with the free tier? How about Crowfall? In spite of spending millions of dollars on development, they both had some pretty severe problems that sure looked to me like things that a game engine ought to handle. And KSP is otherwise quite a good game.
Unity screwed up with their development tiers and most, if not all of the games that have the splash screen "Made with Unity" are on the free tier and those that paid also removed the splash screen. Huge mistake IMO. Since "made with unity" is only associated with the free tier games it's easy to only associate it with completely trash games.
That's interesting, but my comment that Unity games seem to be badly coded isn't just restricted to no-budget indie games. Is Kerbal Space Program a trash game made with the free tier? How about Crowfall? In spite of spending millions of dollars on development, they both had some pretty severe problems that sure looked to me like things that a game engine ought to handle. And KSP is otherwise quite a good game.
I can't comment on KSP as I never played it and the little amount of time I spent in Crowfall I didn't notice any performance issues. It doesn't mean they don't exist, I just didn't experience them.
I did read quite a bit on KSP though and at the time they made it there wasn't an engine that worked beyond 32bit floating point precision so they had to do a lot of custom stuff in order to make the game even work like they wanted. So who knows. Maybe it's the engine causing the issues you noticed or maybe it's due to working beyond it's means. I have no way of knowing.
The creators of VRising mentioned that their previous game Battlerite had some FPS issues with a few players that they attributed to the single core nature of the engine. While an issues this isn't something new that hasn't been worked around before. Because of this they went with DOTS for VRising and have had zero issues in that regard, at least from what I've read.
I tend to lean toward the notion that as engines have advanced, developers become lazier and more dependent on them. When something doesn't perform well they don't spend the time to optimize it and blame the system.
Unity screwed up with their development tiers and most, if not all of the games that have the splash screen "Made with Unity" are on the free tier and those that paid also removed the splash screen. Huge mistake IMO. Since "made with unity" is only associated with the free tier games it's easy to only associate it with completely trash games.
That's interesting, but my comment that Unity games seem to be badly coded isn't just restricted to no-budget indie games. Is Kerbal Space Program a trash game made with the free tier? How about Crowfall? In spite of spending millions of dollars on development, they both had some pretty severe problems that sure looked to me like things that a game engine ought to handle. And KSP is otherwise quite a good game.
I can't comment on KSP as I never played it and the little amount of time I spent in Crowfall I didn't notice any performance issues. It doesn't mean they don't exist, I just didn't experience them.
I did read quite a bit on KSP though and at the time they made it there wasn't an engine that worked beyond 32bit floating point precision so they had to do a lot of custom stuff in order to make the game even work like they wanted. So who knows. Maybe it's the engine causing the issues you noticed or maybe it's due to working beyond it's means. I have no way of knowing.
The creators of VRising mentioned that their previous game Battlerite had some FPS issues with a few players that they attributed to the single core nature of the engine. While an issues this isn't something new that hasn't been worked around before. Because of this they went with DOTS for VRising and have had zero issues in that regard, at least from what I've read.
I tend to lean toward the notion that as engines have advanced, developers become lazier and more dependent on them. When something doesn't perform well they don't spend the time to optimize it and blame the system.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Low frame rates is one thing. That can be due to many things that are the fault of the developers.
What's quite another is the inability to draw a window in a sane manner. KSP gives me two choices:
1) run the game maximized 2) run the game in a window at the same size as if it were maximized
Running in a smaller window is not supported. If maximized, then tabbing between windows takes a long time. If not maximized, then sometimes the window breaks and cuts off the bottom so that I can't see or access part of the GUI.
That sure strikes me as the sort of thing that a game engine ought to handle for you, not something that is on the developers. But while KSP is one of the worst offenders, a whole lot of Unity games completely choke on trying to properly display a window in which the game can be rendered.
It's not necessary to have the same code on the engine as on the client, but there are many reasons to do so, most of which include not building the same things twice in different languages. Don't Repeat Yourself. It's a lot simpler in the long run to manage one code base then two.
If you're not going to use Unity on the server then you need to figure out how you're going to build the world in the first place. If you use Unity to build the world then you need to figure out how to export the world so the server knows where the static world is. It needs to know this for collisions. If you want NPCs then you need to decide how you're going to handle their navigation. Navmeshes and collisions are already built into the engine. If you're not using unity to build the world then you need to get that world into Unity for the client to use.
Whether it's easier to manage one code base or two depends on how much the code bases have in common. If 80% of the code that each needs is common to both, then sure, you'd like to have a single, unified code base. If 1% is shared, then trying to have a unified code base is going to be a lot of work for not much upside.
While it could depend on the inner details of a game, I'd bet on the amount of shared functionality between the server and client being not much. Sure, they have to be able to handle the "same" game world in some sense, but what they have to handle about it hardly has anything in common. The client needs to handle a variety of art assets, while the server only needs the physics and that's it. When something changes, the server has to update the authoritative database, while the client can't even see the database and just has to display whatever the server tells it to. When characters move, the server has to do the authoritative computations on what is possible, while the client can only guess at the current state of the world by running time forward from a past state. The server has to do AI computations, while the client only knows that mobs do whatever the server says that they do.
Sure, you can make a class that has 20 class variables and 20 class methods, with the server having its half, the client having its half, and barely anything shared between them. But you really shouldn't do that, as it's stupid, wasteful, and a mess to maintain.
Even if you do have a substantial amount of code that is appropriately shared between the server and the client, you just stick it in libraries and link it in on both ends. Perhaps that means that that particular portion of the code has to be written in the same language on both ends, but there are plenty of programming projects that use a mix of different languages for different parts of the project.
Did the developers merely mean that the server is using a few libraries that they borrowed from the Unity engine because they do something useful to the server? Maybe that's what they meant, and if so, maybe that's fine. But that's not what it sounded like, and a good library that just handles one small part of a project usually won't do mysterious things with memory allocation that naturally lead to memory leaks.
I will admit I was wrong about this game. While I wanted it to be successful, and I loved the idea... it is a broken mess. There is hardly any content. On top of that, you can either kill trash mobs in the zones (which is a COMPLETE waste of time because at level 19 you have to kill a thousand to level and killing one takes around 2-3 minutes depending because you have to rest and combat is slow) or you have to get a full group and do the dungeons for your level which is only fun for 1-2 runs then gets super boring.
There is nothing else to do, all you hear in the game is, who wants to do Spiders, Wolves, Bunnies, wtf, there is nothing else, oh and LFG Aquafin, LFG Spider, the only 2 dungeons worth doing at level 19-22. Boring as hell. I had 2 other friends that I always play with, they both quit out of sheer boredom. We just wanted to do some dungeon runs the of us and it is impossible to dungeons at our level without 3 more people and we just do not feel like spending 45 minutes trying to fill teh group. Then the fights take so long that running a dungeon is a series of long-drawn-out fights and resting, nothing to the dungeons except, pull, kill rest, rinse repeat, nothing else to the dungeons. Also, when you run a dungeon like Aqua or CVE or CVE2, you end up with only a couple people getting a named item, hardly any money and at level 18 after 2 hours of a dungeon I had gotten 20% of level 18. That is 10% per hour, that is terrible, I gelt like I wasted my evening doing that dungeon. Super sad design.
I had high hopes but this one is dead.
I will admit I was wrong about this game. While I wanted it to be successful, and I loved the idea... it is a broken mess.
Yeah I agree with you, its hard to believe anyone past 20-25 will think this game is good. It has a decent early game, in that you think wow this is not bad to start, you think its going to get better but doesn't, it gets worse actually. If people at level 5 knew what they were seeing was the best part of the game, I think they would form a different opinion.
This game has no fun game loops at all. Loot is horrible, cant spec your character to differentiate yourself because loot is pretty much meaningless with no real modifiers that matter. I don't think I ever seen a game with worse loot actually.
Mobs have no real abilities, so there are not a lot of gameplay tactics.
All your skills auto-level, so no specing differently than anyone else. The skills in this game feel subpar, especially at high level where you use the newbie skills all game.
All these things and more were told to them in Testing, but the devs said this is what they wanted. With their loyal fanbois saying how there was this large niche of EQ players 10k -100k that wanted this trash. Yeah that didn't materialize at all. This game will be lucky if it has 1k players total next week. Its already down to around 250 concurrent at prime time.
you can either kill trash mobs in the zones (which is a COMPLETE waste of time because at level 19 you have to kill a thousand to level and killing one takes around 2-3 minutes depending because you have to rest and combat is slow) or you have to get a full group and do the dungeons for your level which is only fun for 1-2 runs then gets super boring.
Let's take two classes in Everquest and solo.
First the shaman. You pull one mob and then root and rot it. Rot are all disease spells a dot that slowly takes away the HP and they have many versions of this as they level. They have a slow that reduces the effectiveness of the mobs hits when you melee them. You can do a canni-dance that uses your own HP to gain mana. Then you have a whole plethora of buffs from AC, HP, Agility, Strength, Dexterity, Quickness to name a few that you can use while you melee the mob down with your rot spells whittling away the mob health. Then you also get a pet to help you with the damage at higher levels. The shaman also has a quick getaway with their spirit of the wolf which increases their run speed to run off quickly if things go awry.
Let's now talk about the Necromancer. The Necromancer has Fear that can keep a mob running away but by snaring the mob, it will be running away slowly while you use direct damage spells or dots like poison or disease together with your skeleton pet beating on it to bring the mob down. The Necromancer can also use their own HP to gain mana back. The class also has life taps , pet haste and heals. If things go badly you can feign death and survive. They can also charm the undead.
So as you can see soloing can be interesting if you have skills, abilities and strategies you can employ to break up the monotony. If you do not have ways to spice up the combat then sitting long hours pulling mob after mob and gaining slow experience is horrible.
Similar too is grouping if you're not doing much the fact that you're grouping is not going to magically make it interesting. Fighting together using interesting skills and abilities is the key to have fun.
I cannot help but think a game that is 23 years old has more mechanics than this one.
They created the slow gain of experience but forgot to add fun abilities, spells and skills to liven up combat and without those things the combat is just a terrible slog that isn't going to keep anyone interested for long. In Everquest one of the most interesting things to look forward to is the ability to gain passive abilities that you can then train up or buying new spells or abilities. Without these things to look forward to what is the point of a level aside from a higher number?
They created the slow gain of experience but forgot to add fun abilities, spells and skills to liven up combat and without those things the combat is just a terrible slog that isn't going to keep anyone interested for long.
They didn't forget, there were plenty of voices in testing that said the abilities of this game were trash and gave many ways to fix it easily. The devs wanted it this way for some reason.
I think slow combat can still be fun, but you have to have abilities that have a purpose to allow players to react and create good combat. Having slow combat allows people to take into consideration what ability to do when. But the game has to be designed this way.
Example in this game they have a shield spell that lasts for 1 hit. What they need is to give mobs abilities where they foreshadow a special large attack, then the person can use the shield 1 ability defend that special attack if done within a timeframe. However the way this game is, every attack is the same so no skill or timing is needed.
Other ways would be some classes could put short timed (but strong) debuffs on mobs that make them weak to certain attacks. If classes are paying attention, they could use specific abilities to increase their dps if done while this debuff is going.
None of that is in Embers. In fact, you run out of stamina so fast, in long battles you might as well just use your most efficient DPS attack over and over again. There is really no point to do anything else.
But the devs were told all this, they said this game wasn't really about combat, its about romping around with friends, its about adventure. Yet were is the adventure LOL, no adventure to be seen.
Sigh, they didn't forget to include the features and abilities you all mention, nor was it done by intentional design, rather they didn't have the funds to deliver them properly.
So they went live with "something", for better or worse. Not the first studio to do so, certainly will not be the last.
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
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"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
Sigh, they didn't forget to include the features and abilities you all mention, nor was it done by intentional design, rather they didn't have the funds to deliver them properly.
So they went live with "something", for better or worse. Not the first studio to do so, certainly will not be the last.
Burn down rates are real.
Better to launch an incomplete game than to run out of money with nothing to show for it like Chronicles of Elyria.
Sigh, they didn't forget to include the features and abilities you all mention, nor was it done by intentional design, rather they didn't have the funds to deliver them properly.
So they went live with "something", for better or worse. Not the first studio to do so, certainly will not be the last.
Burn down rates are real.
Nice in theory, and to some degree missing content can be blamed on money. If you have enough money you can overcome alot. But a lot of the design was in fact intended. They even rolled back some changes. Additionally they put many many hours into completely moronic design when a simple design would have been much better.
An example of this was they built this entire graphical planet and atmosphere to function as a compass. When all they needed was a very simple compass. Additionally they added a completely 3rd party program to do this function. Yet after it was launched the game lagged so bad, most of their lag problems is probably do to this. How many hours went into this LOL, I would get a TON. All because they didn't want to give the players a compass. Even worse is 90% of the people turn these features off due to the lag the game has.
Another example, they have made around 4 different design changes regarding inventory increases. I suggested a low weight but simple database design they use in ESO crafting bags. It is a simple concept, easy to implement and would have pretty much solved inventory as a problem. But they spent months explaining how small inventory was important to the game, doing backwards designs for this vision, eventually they conceded and have since conceded multiple times, yet still inventory is a problem. All because they cant think a little bit ahead of what's important to the games core. How many hours were invested in arguing on the forums over this by their lead dev? A ton I can assure you, also how much time invested in overhauling the terrible design they have?
I can go on and on how they spent time doing one thing, to later completely change it. Usually in programming you think first what you want to do before you actually spend all the time writing the code just to completely overhaul it a short time later? No common sense at all.
Okay so I was curious and bought into this because I want more old school MMO's and don't really care that it's basically a pre alpha at the moment. So far it seems alright, kind of unoptimized and not really easy to figure out what is going on. I also didn't realize this was Saga of Lucimia renamed with no magic, so that was interesting to learn.
It's not necessary to have the same code on the engine as on the client, but there are many reasons to do so, most of which include not building the same things twice in different languages. Don't Repeat Yourself. It's a lot simpler in the long run to manage one code base then two.
Ehh....There's not exactly a ton of crossover in how server architecture/code is done versus how a client is written. The packages I know of for Unity that allow you to write servers within the engine are doing a lot of translating for you to achieve that, which means a lot of bloat in the code and an extra layer of processing to translate things on the back-end, which translates to inherently worse performance.
Can you reach high level solo? Yes If you want to just grind mobs for hours and hours, that's certainly doable, but 80% of the areas you will not be able to go.
The group and social dynamic of this game is one of its only positives. If you strip that away you are not left with much else.
So now people are finally coming forward and saying this game is subpar.
Where before all these fanboys coming out the woodwork saying how great the game is blah blah blah, then you find out they are only level 3. Where are they now? With the leveling curve, level 25 probably about 10% of the way to level 50. It takes about 5 days of play to get to 25, yet almost 4 weeks later, those people have disappeared. So where are those fanboys now, why not come back and give an honest assessment of the game post level 25. Tell us how great the game is and if its worth a sub after 25 in its current form LOL.
Its like there are these people, that have to drag everyone over the cliff with them.
It's not a "finally" thing. The game has had plenty of critique expressed about it, with you among the loudest banging that drum. Beside that, it's not unusual for a MMORPG to lose a substantial number of players about a month after release.
The most ardent of their fans are still playing the game, and will likely subscribe when the opportunity presents. They will continue to feel the game great, at least for them. This was never going to be a title with mass appeal to begin with.
Well i'm out of the game since the sub. I am not paying for a buggy and half content game, all there is left to do is grind and grind. Game has great potential but therefore I will not pay additional money for the current state, it is not fair. Maybe i'll be back in a few months.
It's not necessary to have the same code on the engine as on the client, but there are many reasons to do so, most of which include not building the same things twice in different languages. Don't Repeat Yourself. It's a lot simpler in the long run to manage one code base then two.
Ehh....There's not exactly a ton of crossover in how server architecture/code is done versus how a client is written. The packages I know of for Unity that allow you to write servers within the engine are doing a lot of translating for you to achieve that, which means a lot of bloat in the code and an extra layer of processing to translate things on the back-end, which translates to inherently worse performance.
Comments
I can't comment on KSP as I never played it and the little amount of time I spent in Crowfall I didn't notice any performance issues. It doesn't mean they don't exist, I just didn't experience them.
Maybe I'm wrong.
What's quite another is the inability to draw a window in a sane manner. KSP gives me two choices:
1) run the game maximized
2) run the game in a window at the same size as if it were maximized
Running in a smaller window is not supported. If maximized, then tabbing between windows takes a long time. If not maximized, then sometimes the window breaks and cuts off the bottom so that I can't see or access part of the GUI.
That sure strikes me as the sort of thing that a game engine ought to handle for you, not something that is on the developers. But while KSP is one of the worst offenders, a whole lot of Unity games completely choke on trying to properly display a window in which the game can be rendered.
While it could depend on the inner details of a game, I'd bet on the amount of shared functionality between the server and client being not much. Sure, they have to be able to handle the "same" game world in some sense, but what they have to handle about it hardly has anything in common. The client needs to handle a variety of art assets, while the server only needs the physics and that's it. When something changes, the server has to update the authoritative database, while the client can't even see the database and just has to display whatever the server tells it to. When characters move, the server has to do the authoritative computations on what is possible, while the client can only guess at the current state of the world by running time forward from a past state. The server has to do AI computations, while the client only knows that mobs do whatever the server says that they do.
Sure, you can make a class that has 20 class variables and 20 class methods, with the server having its half, the client having its half, and barely anything shared between them. But you really shouldn't do that, as it's stupid, wasteful, and a mess to maintain.
Even if you do have a substantial amount of code that is appropriately shared between the server and the client, you just stick it in libraries and link it in on both ends. Perhaps that means that that particular portion of the code has to be written in the same language on both ends, but there are plenty of programming projects that use a mix of different languages for different parts of the project.
Did the developers merely mean that the server is using a few libraries that they borrowed from the Unity engine because they do something useful to the server? Maybe that's what they meant, and if so, maybe that's fine. But that's not what it sounded like, and a good library that just handles one small part of a project usually won't do mysterious things with memory allocation that naturally lead to memory leaks.
There is nothing else to do, all you hear in the game is, who wants to do Spiders, Wolves, Bunnies, wtf, there is nothing else, oh and LFG Aquafin, LFG Spider, the only 2 dungeons worth doing at level 19-22. Boring as hell. I had 2 other friends that I always play with, they both quit out of sheer boredom. We just wanted to do some dungeon runs the of us and it is impossible to dungeons at our level without 3 more people and we just do not feel like spending 45 minutes trying to fill teh group. Then the fights take so long that running a dungeon is a series of long-drawn-out fights and resting, nothing to the dungeons except, pull, kill rest, rinse repeat, nothing else to the dungeons. Also, when you run a dungeon like Aqua or CVE or CVE2, you end up with only a couple people getting a named item, hardly any money and at level 18 after 2 hours of a dungeon I had gotten 20% of level 18. That is 10% per hour, that is terrible, I gelt like I wasted my evening doing that dungeon. Super sad design.
I had high hopes but this one is dead.
Yeah I agree with you, its hard to believe anyone past 20-25 will think this game is good. It has a decent early game, in that you think wow this is not bad to start, you think its going to get better but doesn't, it gets worse actually. If people at level 5 knew what they were seeing was the best part of the game, I think they would form a different opinion.
This game has no fun game loops at all.
Loot is horrible, cant spec your character to differentiate yourself because loot is pretty much meaningless with no real modifiers that matter. I don't think I ever seen a game with worse loot actually.
Mobs have no real abilities, so there are not a lot of gameplay tactics.
All your skills auto-level, so no specing differently than anyone else. The skills in this game feel subpar, especially at high level where you use the newbie skills all game.
All these things and more were told to them in Testing, but the devs said this is what they wanted. With their loyal fanbois saying how there was this large niche of EQ players 10k -100k that wanted this trash. Yeah that didn't materialize at all. This game will be lucky if it has 1k players total next week. Its already down to around 250 concurrent at prime time.
Let's take two classes in Everquest and solo.
First the shaman. You pull one mob and then root and rot it. Rot are all disease spells a dot that slowly takes away the HP and they have many versions of this as they level. They have a slow that reduces the effectiveness of the mobs hits when you melee them. You can do a canni-dance that uses your own HP to gain mana. Then you have a whole plethora of buffs from AC, HP, Agility, Strength, Dexterity, Quickness to name a few that you can use while you melee the mob down with your rot spells whittling away the mob health. Then you also get a pet to help you with the damage at higher levels. The shaman also has a quick getaway with their spirit of the wolf which increases their run speed to run off quickly if things go awry.
Let's now talk about the Necromancer. The Necromancer has Fear that can keep a mob running away but by snaring the mob, it will be running away slowly while you use direct damage spells or dots like poison or disease together with your skeleton pet beating on it to bring the mob down. The Necromancer can also use their own HP to gain mana back. The class also has life taps , pet haste and heals. If things go badly you can feign death and survive. They can also charm the undead.
So as you can see soloing can be interesting if you have skills, abilities and strategies you can employ to break up the monotony. If you do not have ways to spice up the combat then sitting long hours pulling mob after mob and gaining slow experience is horrible.
Similar too is grouping if you're not doing much the fact that you're grouping is not going to magically make it interesting. Fighting together using interesting skills and abilities is the key to have fun.
I cannot help but think a game that is 23 years old has more mechanics than this one.
They created the slow gain of experience but forgot to add fun abilities, spells and skills to liven up combat and without those things the combat is just a terrible slog that isn't going to keep anyone interested for long. In Everquest one of the most interesting things to look forward to is the ability to gain passive abilities that you can then train up or buying new spells or abilities. Without these things to look forward to what is the point of a level aside from a higher number?
I think slow combat can still be fun, but you have to have abilities that have a purpose to allow players to react and create good combat. Having slow combat allows people to take into consideration what ability to do when. But the game has to be designed this way.
Example in this game they have a shield spell that lasts for 1 hit. What they need is to give mobs abilities where they foreshadow a special large attack, then the person can use the shield 1 ability defend that special attack if done within a timeframe.
However the way this game is, every attack is the same so no skill or timing is needed.
Other ways would be some classes could put short timed (but strong) debuffs on mobs that make them weak to certain attacks. If classes are paying attention, they could use specific abilities to increase their dps if done while this debuff is going.
None of that is in Embers. In fact, you run out of stamina so fast, in long battles you might as well just use your most efficient DPS attack over and over again. There is really no point to do anything else.
But the devs were told all this, they said this game wasn't really about combat, its about romping around with friends, its about adventure. Yet were is the adventure LOL, no adventure to be seen.
So they went live with "something", for better or worse. Not the first studio to do so, certainly will not be the last.
Burn down rates are real.
"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
An example of this was they built this entire graphical planet and atmosphere to function as a compass. When all they needed was a very simple compass. Additionally they added a completely 3rd party program to do this function. Yet after it was launched the game lagged so bad, most of their lag problems is probably do to this. How many hours went into this LOL, I would get a TON. All because they didn't want to give the players a compass. Even worse is 90% of the people turn these features off due to the lag the game has.
Another example, they have made around 4 different design changes regarding inventory increases. I suggested a low weight but simple database design they use in ESO crafting bags. It is a simple concept, easy to implement and would have pretty much solved inventory as a problem. But they spent months explaining how small inventory was important to the game, doing backwards designs for this vision, eventually they conceded and have since conceded multiple times, yet still inventory is a problem. All because they cant think a little bit ahead of what's important to the games core. How many hours were invested in arguing on the forums over this by their lead dev? A ton I can assure you, also how much time invested in overhauling the terrible design they have?
I can go on and on how they spent time doing one thing, to later completely change it. Usually in programming you think first what you want to do before you actually spend all the time writing the code just to completely overhaul it a short time later? No common sense at all.
Most of the content for this game is group based.
Can you reach high level solo? Yes
If you want to just grind mobs for hours and hours, that's certainly doable, but 80% of the areas you will not be able to go.
The group and social dynamic of this game is one of its only positives. If you strip that away you are not left with much else.
Well i'm out of the game since the sub. I am not paying for a buggy and half content game, all there is left to do is grind and grind. Game has great potential but therefore I will not pay additional money for the current state, it is not fair. Maybe i'll be back in a few months.
Completely false.
Running a server through a game engine directly requires a lot of extra, and unnecessary, code.