Can't you simple ban the whole proxy's IP range ? Yeah, that will also block innocent people using that same proxy, but if they're using a proxy in the first place, they're maybe not that innocent ? That's a small price to pay to get ride of that no-life idiot.

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by r0guy

From the Lead developper,

------------------------------------------------------------------------

12. Dynamic storyline. What i mean with "dynamic" is this: in most MMOs, you have a storyline ( sometimes very complex like in Eve ) written by the developers, and missions / quests related to it. However, none of those quests affect or make the storyline progress. Infinity's storyline will be, by many aspects, closer to the one of a single-player game, with some specific player actions "triggering" a progress of the storyline.

So I play an MMORPG to play a single player storyline?

Awesome, then why play it as an MMORPG then?

Fail!

The storyline is only an aspect of the game; nobody forces you to follow it if you're not interested in it. Or is your point that a MMO without a story is better ?

In addition, the storyline is multiplayer. That's the difference with a single player game. Players can compete or collaborate to achieve the goals.

Let me give you an example: imagine that there are tensions between two planets A and B. Depending on what players do in-game, for example pirating NPC ships trading between A and B, they could trigger a war between those two planets, in which players could in turn participate. This means that the game world evolves depending on player's actions. 

Originally posted by spinach8puff

Playing MMOs is a hobby. Buying something to aid me in my hobby isn't a big deal in my opinion. It's like using bait while fishing. Yes, I could just use a hook and waste hours upon hours hoping to get a little closer to my goal, but I could die tomorrow. I want to get as far as I can with the time I am allotted.

And what if your bait was polluting the river ? Because that's exactly the problem here, and why so many people are against it. Cheating in a solo game ? That's your choice. Cheating in a multi game ? You're negatively affecting others.

Yeah, plus a whole week of waiting time, can you imagine ? That's totally unacceptable. How slow and non-reactive they are, they're clearly incompetent, let's get them all fired !

/sarcasm off

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Originally posted by Axehilt 

It's not wise to give your customers the option of ruining their own gameplay experience (by all choosing to play on the same server and experiencing terrible game performance.)  So as bad as you think the design is, it's worse to not have queues.

I can see the logic in the first part of this statement, but I can't agree with the highlighted part.

I don't see queues as being a reasonable solution to the problem; not in 2009. With all the advances in networking and such in the past 10 years, there should be a less obstructive method of dealing with the problem, i.e. one that doesn't completely prevent one from playing the game.

There's this strange thing of players *demanding* that new servers are opened within the day, else it's the end of the world.

/sarcasm mode on

Of course, everybody knows that acquiring a new server, installing and configuring software on it, tuning the parameters for better performance, synchronizing all the servers between each other, can be done in a few minutes. In fact, a student could do it. It's common sense, isn't it ?

/sarcasm mode off

Preparing more servers for the initial rush ? How do you decide how many servers are needed for that ? You can only do rough estimations, for example how do you estimate how many hours a player will stay logged on in average ? There are dozens of unknown factors, and developers don't have a crystal ball. The overhead would cost a lot more to the company too, so financially it wouldn't be a good operation.

After the dust settles, players still won't be happy. Server merges ? Have fun with the complaints, between "they're already merging servers, epic fail", "my friends/clan members ended up on a different server", "I now have bad latency", "poor design", etc.. And following the student's rule, everybody knows that merging servers is free and takes no effort.

If you haven't understood yet, I'm of the opinion that, yes, server queues are bad.. but they're the lesser of the two evil..

The only thing that I'd like to see changed from the way the company's handling the problem, is to add a few days of free play time to those that can't connect or have waited for many hours in the queue.

I have a funny theory: players wouldn't complain as much if classes were never nerfed, but buffed individually, and nerfed as a whole equally.

Let me explain: imagine the scenario where you have 3 classes: Warrior, Mage and Paladin. Mage is overpowered, Warrior is fine, Paladin is too weak.

Now imagine that in a first step, developers buffed the Paladin class a lot and buffed the Warrior class a little bit. As a result, the three classes are now roughly balanced. But this obviously leads to inflation.

Now imagine that in a second step, maybe months later, ALL classes at the same time get hit by the nerf bat equally, to cancel the inflation problem. For example, all classes do X% less damage, or have X% less hitpoints/manapoints.

In the end, the result would be similar to achieving balance by tweaking classes individually ( nerfing some, buffing others ), except that now I suspect players would consider it to be fair...

Dear Dana,

I hate to break it to anyone running a competitor, or developing “the next big thing,” but your game is likely not in the same field as WoW. So, I ask, why the heck do you insist on charging the same price?

Your argument makes sense when you look at it from the player's perspective. But when you put yourself in the shoes of the developer, does it still hold ?

So the main question I would like to ask you is, do you think the per-player-cost that the developer has to pay monthly is lower for indies than for Blizzard ?

Do you think bandwidth is less expensive for indies ? Do you think the bandwidth a player consumes when playing is lower than in WoW ? Do you think the server resources the player consumes ( % of cpu, % of ram ) is lower ? Do you think the player needs less attention from customer support/representatives ? Do you think the game needs less maintenance/patches than an AAA title ? Do you think the processing fees/taxes through third-parties are smaller ? Remember, I'm talking of the per-player monthly expenses, not the total cost for everybody, which of course will be much higher when you have millions of players.

Chances are, you've answered no to those questions. At best you're paying the same price, at worse you don't get the same deals and pay even more.

So when you ask "why do indy developers insist on charging the same price ?", maybe the answer simply is: "because they can't afford to reduce it or they'd loose money" ?

Without taking side on who's right or who's wrong, I'll only remark that I indeed could not locate the aforementionned thread either, and I tried various strings and even a search on the poster name. So it indeed looks like it has been deleted.

You guys should really read the complaint instead of throwing accusations at RG without knowing what you're speaking of.

No, RG did not write this open letter announcing his departure. NCSoft did. RG was still in quarantine in Russia when this happened. He merely approved it at the time, unaware that his departure was deemed as "voluntary" by NCSoft. If he had known, he wouldn't have approved it, that's the whole point of the complaint !

Geez, I don't even know why I explain that, the few people who have truely read the complaint and understand the issue are a minority, flooded by the "RG said he left, so he has no case" posts..

---

Originally posted by treelo
Let's face it, the Asian market is nothing like it's NA/EU equivalent. F2P grindfests are released all the time, many don't make it to this part of the world because quite frankly, they're not up to the much higher standards we expect from our games.

---

What makes you think that the Western market has higher standards than the Asian one ? I mean, other than obvious biais. I'd be curious to see a study on this topic. 

---

Originally posted by treelo
Aion is a fairly good representation of this, I wouldn't pay to play an unfinished, bug-ridden game and I don't know many people who would. I understand it is doing just fine over there though.

---

Yeah, it's not like the western market is full of bug-ridden unfinished games :) Oh wait.. isn't it what 90% of users from this site complain about ? :)

I can't comment on Darkfall since I haven't played it, but here's a professional programmer point of view on the code that has been posted: it's horrible.

The OP criticizes the non-existing use of elapsed time in the client and posts pseudo-code to show how it's supposed to be. The only problem is that none of the time variables set in "UpdateTime" are used in his "Agent_Move" function, so really, either he seriously typo-ed his code, either he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Originally posted by Prominent

Okey, here are all the posts Ghoul31 wrote ....

Its alot of complains from Ghoul31. I think the moderator thought that he was just  creating alot of negative at the forum.

http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/search.php?searchid=118816

 

First post:

 

"I am disappointed. Shadowbane had lots of cool races. They had minotaurs, centaurs, vampires, Flying bird creatures, Flying demons, dwarves.

It seems that MMORPGS these days take 2 steps backward..."

 

Then he starts to complain on the full loot system (I can agree a little here).

Lastly he insinuate that Star Vault  will fail ...

 

"There have been a lot of small companies trying to make revolutionary sandbox pvp games. Dark and Light, Roma Victor, Mourning, Shadowbane and now Darkfall.

And they all have been failures. What..."

 

Just alot of negative posts and insinuating that Star Vault will fail .... I am not surprise he was banned.

I think that's spot on.

The OP is what I'd call a "Mr. Never Happy". Pressuring the developers, showing little respect, not giving the benefits of the doubt, criticizing what he sees as negative points ( while often it's just a matter of preference ), etc.. At the same time, he does not speak positively of the game or shows any interest in it, does not suggest that he'd buy it even if there are a few things he dislikes, etc..

Now look at it from the moderator's perspective: you've got somebody who's probably no longer a potential customer, who disrupts the community, spreads his doubts and pressures the developers. What are you gonna do ?

Here's one thing to consider: if they teamed up with a third-party company to handle payments, there could be a 1 month ( or even more ? ) delay before they get the sales funds transferred to their account ?

What about the chat box ? Many people have mentionned it... how is it and what does it lack compared to "standard" MMOs ?

Originally posted by huxflux2004

The UI is so bad, that I want to take a look at my quest journal and am too disgusted to open it! Seriously, the UI is as amateur, ugly, impractical as it can get. It would be unacceptable even on a 10-years old game. Sad truth

That's not very constructive. Please list the main problems you see with the interface. So far most people have been saying that it's different, but I still don't understand what's so horrible about it.

A lot of people have reported that the UI in Darkfall is disastrous. Although I haven't played the game yet, from what I've seen in the videos it doesn't seem to be that bad, but of course it's hard to get a clear idea simply from a bunch of videos. Can anybody who has played the game elaborate on what the UI misses / does wrong, and what they should do to improve it ?

Originally posted by nekrothing

Someone on this forum once said that Aventurine is an indie company charging mainstream prices. If they're going to charge mainstream prices, they should be treated like a mainstream company.

...

When Aventurine tried to act like a mainstream company, charging mainstream prices for their product, charging mainstream monthly fees, they accepted the responsibilites to be treated like a mainstream company/steak.

...

Charge indie prices for their game ($20.00-$30.00), and indie monthly fees ($5.00-$10.00).

Once they start doing that, they'll have an excuse for all of their slack.

What makes you think that, being an indy company, they can afford lower prices ?

Let me explain: take two games, one is an AAA title with a 50 millions dollars budget, the second one is an indy title with a 1 million dollars budget.

Both games are sold at the same price: 50$.

The first game sells 1 million copies , while the second game sells 20K copies.

If you calculate the net income, you'll find that they both exactly cover their development cost. But the indy game had to be sold at a full AAA price to achieve that. If it were sold at 20$, it would have lost a lot of money, and the company would have closed.

That's for the box price / fixed fee. What about the monthly fee ? Do you think hardware, bandwith, customer support, etc.. is cheaper for indies ? "No, but they need less servers and bandwith", will you say. True, but they also have less players to pay for those servers and bandwith, so it compensates. It's all relative. The "cost per player" ( amount of money each active player is costing to the company ) is roughly equivalent, whether this player is playing on an AAA title or an indy title. It would make little business/logic sense to reduce the price just because you're an indie IMO.

Originally posted by jayheld90

Originally posted by Nyast

Originally posted by jayheld90

Originally posted by John.A.Zoid

Originally posted by kelarcanus

The graphics are actually pretty damn amazing with everything cranked up, not even LoTRO's DX10 shadows are this good. (Of course the water sucks as only DX9 water can, sadly)

 

Ok

1. You have obviously not played the game, have bad eye sight or really really low standards.
2. Theres no difference between DX9 and DX10 water, the only difference is DX10 is meant to be faster, increasing framerate.

lol, check out the first set of screenshots on this page...and then tell me there is no difference between dx9 and dx10 water. www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php

As a graphics developer I know for a fact that the DX10 "screenshot" was photoshopped. It was in a presentation made by Microsoft before the release of Vista to show what kind of effects / improvements you'd be able to achieve *in theory* in DX10, but it was not "real".  Unfortunately, the sub-titles in the presentation have been removed and the images copied all over the Internet, and unaware gamers now truely believe that this was a DX10 screenshot of Flight Sim.

You should also stop thinking in terms of "DX9 water" versus "DX10 water". There's no "render water" feature in DirectX. Water is usually achieved by rendering the reflected scene into a texture and distorting it in a shader. DX10 offers new render-to-texture, tesselation/displacements (via geometry shaders) and shader effects that can be used to produce more realistic water, or more realistic shadowing, or more realistic lighting, or.. *insert feature here*... but to be fair, that DX9 water screenshot absolutely sucks. It's possible to do much better water with DX9 features only, so it's not even a good case to make a fair comparison between DX9 and DX10. 

it isnt a screenshot of flight sim. it is a render. you may want to go back to graphics design school. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_(computer_graphics)

1. I'm a programmer, not an artist or designer. That's why I'm speaking of DX10. Because I know how it works.

2. You are the one who claimed it was a screenshot. Now you say it's a render ? You seem to be very confused now..

Originally posted by jayheld90

Originally posted by John.A.Zoid

Originally posted by kelarcanus

The graphics are actually pretty damn amazing with everything cranked up, not even LoTRO's DX10 shadows are this good. (Of course the water sucks as only DX9 water can, sadly)

 

Ok

1. You have obviously not played the game, have bad eye sight or really really low standards.
2. Theres no difference between DX9 and DX10 water, the only difference is DX10 is meant to be faster, increasing framerate.

lol, check out the first set of screenshots on this page...and then tell me there is no difference between dx9 and dx10 water. www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php

As a graphics developer I know for a fact that the DX10 "screenshot" was photoshopped. It was in a presentation made by Microsoft before the release of Vista to show what kind of effects / improvements you'd be able to achieve *in theory* in DX10, but it was not "real".  Unfortunately, the sub-titles in the presentation have been removed and the images copied all over the Internet, and unaware gamers now truely believe that this was a DX10 screenshot of Flight Sim.

You should also stop thinking in terms of "DX9 water" versus "DX10 water". There's no "render water" feature in DirectX. Water is usually achieved by rendering the reflected scene into a texture and distorting it in a shader. DX10 offers new render-to-texture, tesselation/displacements (via geometry shaders) and shader effects that can be used to produce more realistic water, or more realistic shadowing, or more realistic lighting, or.. *insert feature here*... but to be fair, that DX9 water screenshot absolutely sucks. It's possible to do much better water with DX9 features only, so it's not even a good case to make a fair comparison between DX9 and DX10.

Originally posted by bobbarker949

Here is EU attitude..
1. Hi, we make product, you complain we don't care, go away, we dont need you.
THIS IS THE POMPOUS ATTITUDE YOU LOVE TO DISH OUT AND WE DONT TOLEATE IT
Dont get offended, its your attitude, deal with it.

This is #1 reason why 2nd Life and ANY other EU release will NEVER EVER be a success in the USA
USA expect a top notch experience and world class support because we have better lives and expect so much more.

Wait, I thought you've had problems with Turbine, which is NA, isn't it ? Is that the "top-notch" experience and "world class support" you're speaking of ?

As for the "Americans have better lives" cliché, I really don't know how to respond to that without flaming, so I guess I won't. With that kind of attitude, you still wonder why most of the world hates you ...