First off, I am NOT, repeat, NOT in alpha/beta/whatever...Got it? In NO WAY HAVE I PLAYED THIS GAME YET......

I've seen plenty of videos of the game, listened to the 'devs' speak on the game, and have read plenty about it. Heres why this game will not only tank, but tank bigtime.....

Regardless of how long this 'team' of devs have been working on the game, content will be shallow. Its as simple as work force= gameplay. And they have an extremely small dev team. And we all know how fast gamers fly by content these days. There simply will not be enough to do

Customer service after launch will be relatively non existant. Again, with hardly any funding, how in the hell can they get a sizeable team to deal with the problems in and out of the game? And c'mon people, we all know how the first few weeks of a mmorpg go. People will be crying about tickets not being answered, bugs everywhere, blah blah blah........

The game engine is horribad. Any sizable pvp will end in massive vaporlock. Once again, the almost non existant team won't be able to handle this.

Have you seen the AI in the videos? The mobs just stand there. Period. Its comical.....

I could go on and on, but don't feel like typing any longer. Point of the matter is don't get your hopes up for this game. All signs points to sub par mmo. Once again, I have NOT participated in the game...

If you refer to the engine being crap as being used in SWTOR, they used a heavily modified 7 year old version where the HE devs have kept telling them not to do it.

Just need to correct a few things:

... On Size Of the Team, or Size of the Budget

While you can generally assume that more manpower = more production, that isn't always the case. In Repop, much of what we do is based on generated content. Once you have a good generation system in place, it allows you to be more efficient in your content creation. Rather than designing 7500 hand designed missions by hand, we focus on designing 500 templates. The templates specify the rules, item types, npc types, etc and each of those can be reused many times and each time the npcs, items, etc will be different. You can a lot things done with less people if you can automate or reuse a lot of it.

For things like artwork, you outsource to external artists or art houses, use licensed models, etc. Those types of things would all be mentions in the credits, but they don't count as team members.  Outsourcing is generally far more efficient from a price standpoint than if you do everything in-house.

... On Hero Engine

Your making a judgement on the engine based on how you saw TOR handle PvP or crowds of players. That is not a Hero Engine problem. It's a problem due to a lot of customization on the TOR models. It works fine for the situations the game was designed for most of the time (sparse player population, personal storyline, lot of soloing). It didn't work as well with a large number of players. But those are design decisions.  Had TOR had a primary focus on large scale PvP they probably would have gone in a different direction there, maybe sacrificing some customization to get it done.

As a renderer, Hero Engine isn't on par with the likes of Unreal Tech. But it's strength isn't in its renderer. It does a lot more than that.

... On AI

The last video footage was shot on the first day of ALPHA testing. You can't judge a game AI or any of its systems really based on a 2 second splice you saw in an alpha stage video. At that stage of development everything is still very much a work in progress.

It's in alpha still what is your problem? And HE is a great engine, right up there with Unity, BigWorld, etc, it's one of the best-known customizable engines around, with dozens of games running on it. Everything else you've said is crazy / troll talk, what is your obsession with browbeating a game still in development? :(

Resisting the urge to hit 'report' on your post....

Saying the game will fail because of the size of the workforce is probably one of the most bizarre ones of all, it just means it will take them longer to develope the core game mechanics etc. The OP also seems to have overlooked a rather significant factor that reduces his 'content shortage' argument to the point of being ridiculous, ie. its a sandbox game, and while themepark games thrive on content, sandbox games provide tools instead of, which the players use to create their own, Eve does this, as did SWG before they tried to turn it into a themepark.

Well done OP for watching a few videos and still somehow totally missing the crux of the game. Awesome

Originally posted by Atrocitus

First off, I am NOT, repeat, NOT in alpha/beta/whatever...Got it? In NO WAY HAVE I PLAYED THIS GAME YET......

I've seen plenty of videos of the game, listened to the 'devs' speak on the game, and have read plenty about it. Heres why this game will not only tank, but tank bigtime.....

Regardless of how long this 'team' of devs have been working on the game, content will be shallow. Its as simple as work force= gameplay. And they have an extremely small dev team. And we all know how fast gamers fly by content these days. There simply will not be enough to do

Customer service after launch will be relatively non existant. Again, with hardly any funding, how in the hell can they get a sizeable team to deal with the problems in and out of the game? And c'mon people, we all know how the first few weeks of a mmorpg go. People will be crying about tickets not being answered, bugs everywhere, blah blah blah........

The game engine is horribad. Any sizable pvp will end in massive vaporlock. Once again, the almost non existant team won't be able to handle this.

Have you seen the AI in the videos? The mobs just stand there. Period. Its comical.....

I could go on and on, but don't feel like typing any longer. Point of the matter is don't get your hopes up for this game. All signs points to sub par mmo. Once again, I have NOT participated in the game...

Why is it that people who have done the least seem to criticize the most?

Maybe I'm wrong. If so, can you list the games you've released?

Originally posted by Atrocitus

First off, I am NOT, repeat, NOT in alpha/beta/whatever...Got it? In NO WAY HAVE I PLAYED THIS GAME YET......

 

I've seen plenty of videos of the game, listened to the 'devs' speak on the game, and have read plenty about it. Heres why this game will not only tank, but tank bigtime.....

 

Regardless of how long this 'team' of devs have been working on the game, content will be shallow. Its as simple as work force= gameplay. And they have an extremely small dev team. And we all know how fast gamers fly by content these days. There simply will not be enough to do

 

Customer service after launch will be relatively non existant. Again, with hardly any funding, how in the hell can they get a sizeable team to deal with the problems in and out of the game? And c'mon people, we all know how the first few weeks of a mmorpg go. People will be crying about tickets not being answered, bugs everywhere, blah blah blah........

 

The game engine is horribad. Any sizable pvp will end in massive vaporlock. Once again, the almost non existant team won't be able to handle this.

Have you seen the AI in the videos? The mobs just stand there. Period. Its comical.....

 

 

 

I could go on and on, but don't feel like typing any longer. Point of the matter is don't get your hopes up for this game. All signs points to sub par mmo. Once again, I have NOT participated in the game...

It is an Indie MMO so it cant be an "Epic Fail". Epic fail is when you take $300,000,000 and make a game that sucks so bad and doesn't even come close to living up to the hype like SWTOR did and like what TESO is going to do. Those games are/will be EPIC Fails.

The Repop will probably just end up a fail.

Originally posted by Atrocitus

Regardless of how long this 'team' of devs have been working on the game, content will be shallow. Its as simple as work force= gameplay. And they have an extremely small dev team. And we all know how fast gamers fly by content these days. There simply will not be enough to do

Customer service after launch will be relatively non existant. Again, with hardly any funding, how in the hell can they get a sizeable team to deal with the problems in and out of the game? And c'mon people, we all know how the first few weeks of a mmorpg go. People will be crying about tickets not being answered, bugs everywhere, blah blah blah........

How then do you explain A Tale in the Desert?  That peaked at 4 paid employees, but the gameplay was hardly shallow.

A small dev team means you can't do massive amounts of hand-crafted anything.  That means no AAA graphics, and no enormous amounts of custom themepark content.  But neither of those have much to do with whether a game is shallow.

The size of the development team has nothing to do with customer service quality.  If only a thousand people play the game, then you don't need a ton of people working in customer service to do a proper job of taking care of all of your customers.  And if you have a million people paying to play your game, that's enough revenue to hire an awful lot of customer service people who didn't need to be around during the game's development.  In the latter case, there could be some growing pains between when they realize that the game is far more successful than expected and when they actually have the new customer service people in place, but that's only a temporary problem.

Originally posted by JC-Smith

Just need to correct a few things:

... On Size Of the Team, or Size of the Budget

While you can generally assume that more manpower = more production, that isn't always the case. In Repop, much of what we do is based on generated content. Once you have a good generation system in place, it allows you to be more efficient in your content creation. Rather than designing 7500 hand designed missions by hand, we focus on designing 500 templates. The templates specify the rules, item types, npc types, etc and each of those can be reused many times and each time the npcs, items, etc will be different. You can a lot things done with less people if you can automate or reuse a lot of it.

For things like artwork, you outsource to external artists or art houses, use licensed models, etc. Those types of things would all be mentions in the credits, but they don't count as team members.  Outsourcing is generally far more efficient from a price standpoint than if you do everything in-house.

... On Hero Engine

Your making a judgement on the engine based on how you saw TOR handle PvP or crowds of players. That is not a Hero Engine problem. It's a problem due to a lot of customization on the TOR models. It works fine for the situations the game was designed for most of the time (sparse player population, personal storyline, lot of soloing). It didn't work as well with a large number of players. But those are design decisions.  Had TOR had a primary focus on large scale PvP they probably would have gone in a different direction there, maybe sacrificing some customization to get it done.

As a renderer, Hero Engine isn't on par with the likes of Unreal Tech. But it's strength isn't in its renderer. It does a lot more than that.

... On AI

The last video footage was shot on the first day of ALPHA testing. You can't judge a game AI or any of its systems really based on a 2 second splice you saw in an alpha stage video. At that stage of development everything is still very much a work in progress.

Regarding  'size of the team/budget'....

So automating/reusage in quest content can allow for more content? Perhaps, but logic dictates repeating quest types will become boring after the first 30 runs.

Questing, generally speaking, is something that players are tired of, much less repeated quest type. And it can be argued that questing is a very shallow content base. In this day and age, games are moving away from this old method of keeping players busy.

Again, in two weeks time, after players have done the requisite kill and collect quest or whatever, that type of 'content' will not add to this games allure. Same ol' same ol.....I can hear the players crying now..../shrug

So your argument about computer generated questing giving players something to do? Doesn't hold up......There has to be content, A LOT of it to keep players after the initial launch. There simply are not enough workers to contribute to the overall game.

How you deem 'artwork' as content is beyond me.

Regarding Hero Engine.

Lack of customization is absolutely horrible. Players can't stand looking like the guy next to him. The only mmo that did this right was Aion. And lets face it, The Repop is no Aion when it comes to customization, or alot of other things for that matter.

Horrible graphics, zero customization and watching a pvp slideshow will do nothing to help this game.....

Horrid AI? The oft repeated ITS IN ALPHA hurp/durp excuse isn't going to be enough when this game launches. You and I both know there won't be any massive upgrading in that dept before launch. Be honest.......

Customer service? You glossed over that point......Again, a small work force won't be able to handle the complaints and problems after launch.

Your lack of a larger dev team will be mired in bug squishing eternally. If you think your launching with a lack of content, wait until two months down the road when people are wondering where the content updates are, and your still dealing with alpha bugs......

SImply put, this game has too many negatives going against it....../shrug

In the last few years of SWG existence, there were a handful of devs working on the game. During that time, they cranked out more content than they had ever given the players. They gave us beast master, new space content, new dungeons, chronicles system, etc...

I won't judge them until I see how they manage their finished project.

Some older sandboxy titles had less than a hundred of different quests, but people played them for years because those games didn't focus on limited, hand-crafted content and quest grind. Since they have a small dev team, just giving people a modern, fun sandbox MMO should be enough. We don't have many of those nowadays, especially in the sci-fi genre.

I'm curious, though:

Originally posted by JC-Smith

... On Hero Engine

Your making a judgement on the engine based on how you saw TOR handle PvP or crowds of players. That is not a Hero Engine problem. It's a problem due to a lot of customization on the TOR models. It works fine for the situations the game was designed for most of the time (sparse player population, personal storyline, lot of soloing). It didn't work as well with a large number of players. But those are design decisions.  Had TOR had a primary focus on large scale PvP they probably would have gone in a different direction there, maybe sacrificing some customization to get it done.

As a renderer, Hero Engine isn't on par with the likes of Unreal Tech. But it's strength isn't in its renderer. It does a lot more than that.

So you're saying TOR's problems are caused by its character customization and not the rumored old version BW used?

---

Originally posted by Atrocitus

---

Originally posted by JC-Smith Just need to correct a few things: ... On Size Of the Team, or Size of the Budget While you can generally assume that more manpower = more production, that isn't always the case. In Repop, much of what we do is based on generated content. Once you have a good generation system in place, it allows you to be more efficient in your content creation. Rather than designing 7500 hand designed missions by hand, we focus on designing 500 templates. The templates specify the rules, item types, npc types, etc and each of those can be reused many times and each time the npcs, items, etc will be different. You can a lot things done with less people if you can automate or reuse a lot of it. For things like artwork, you outsource to external artists or art houses, use licensed models, etc. Those types of things would all be mentions in the credits, but they don't count as team members.  Outsourcing is generally far more efficient from a price standpoint than if you do everything in-house. ... On Hero Engine Your making a judgement on the engine based on how you saw TOR handle PvP or crowds of players. That is not a Hero Engine problem. It's a problem due to a lot of customization on the TOR models. It works fine for the situations the game was designed for most of the time (sparse player population, personal storyline, lot of soloing). It didn't work as well with a large number of players. But those are design decisions.  Had TOR had a primary focus on large scale PvP they probably would have gone in a different direction there, maybe sacrificing some customization to get it done. As a renderer, Hero Engine isn't on par with the likes of Unreal Tech. But it's strength isn't in its renderer. It does a lot more than that. ... On AI The last video footage was shot on the first day of ALPHA testing. You can't judge a game AI or any of its systems really based on a 2 second splice you saw in an alpha stage video. At that stage of development everything is still very much a work in progress.

---

Regarding  'size of the team/budget'....

 

So automating/reusage in quest content can allow for more content? Perhaps, but logic dictates repeating quest types will become boring after the first 30 runs.

Questing, generally speaking, is something that players are tired of, much less repeated quest type. And it can be argued that questing is a very shallow content base. In this day and age, games are moving away from this old method of keeping players busy.

Again, in two weeks time, after players have done the requisite kill and collect quest or whatever, that type of 'content' will not add to this games allure. Same ol' same ol.....I can hear the players crying now..../shrug

So your argument about computer generated questing giving players something to do? Doesn't hold up......There has to be content, A LOT of it to keep players after the initial launch. There simply are not enough workers to contribute to the overall game.

How you deem 'artwork' as content is beyond me.

 

 

Regarding Hero Engine.

Lack of customization is absolutely horrible. Players can't stand looking like the guy next to him. The only mmo that did this right was Aion. And lets face it, The Repop is no Aion when it comes to customization, or alot of other things for that matter.

Horrible graphics, zero customization and watching a pvp slideshow will do nothing to help this game.....

 

 

Horrid AI? The oft repeated ITS IN ALPHA hurp/durp excuse isn't going to be enough when this game launches. You and I both know there won't be any massive upgrading in that dept before launch. Be honest.......

 

 

Customer service? You glossed over that point......Again, a small work force won't be able to handle the complaints and problems after launch.

Your lack of a larger dev team will be mired in bug squishing eternally. If you think your launching with a lack of content, wait until two months down the road when people are wondering where the content updates are, and your still dealing with alpha bugs......

SImply put, this game has too many negatives going against it....../shrug

---

Smith:
While im not 100% sold on your product your frequent communication with the community here is inspiring, And your points here do seem realistic and valid.

Atrocitus:
I think your pessimism is abit much here, this game will satisfy its target player base and be profitable in the immediate future.

On your points on questing: Is questing really dying"? i think outside these boards its alive and well. Questing isnt bad along as the Implementation is done correctly.
I have dont have any information on repops implementation so i wont comment.

On the hero engine: You cant base an engines capabilities off one companies poor implementation.

Originally posted by FromHell
Any space combat - off rails - in Repopulation?

The devs said that they have already started sketching out the plans for space. It will be open.  It won't be in at launch though.

Originally posted by Atrocitus

Regardless of how long this 'team' of devs have been working on the game, content will be shallow. Its as simple as work force= gameplay. And they have an extremely small dev team. And we all know how fast gamers fly by content these days. There simply will not be enough to do

i see you never played a sandbox game. in sandbox games the interaction between players is the main content. Oh yeah and creating stuff so again players build the content.