If the kickstarter fails, but the average funding was around $150-$200 each, it will tell me that a pure PvP game still remains a niche market but a very passionate market.  The only other read could be that people refuse to fund a kickstarter that is so very early in development, or a combination of the two.

Personally, i think they will reach about $1.5 million and top out around there.  

Perhaps they should have asked for passive equity partners from qualified investors who are also avid gamers like myself before starting a kickstarter.  I could fund a substantial amount myself, but I'd want a financial return, not just the ability to play the game. Find a few folks like myself and the $2m kickstarter campaign could easily be just $1m. 

Well, I don't mind if archers use a rectile system, if other long range direct damage spells have the same issue.  The main problem with manual targeting is lag.  Works okay for small instances like FPS games, but if you start with a large # of players, lag issues would almost require tab targeting.

Could that be different in this game?  Maybe, but my guess is probably not.   

I can say that not having an archer class would seem odd.

Not sure what the heck the original poster is talking about.  I have yet to see an MMO game not completely drop FPS when there are like 50-100 players on the screen.  Most games become a slide-show at that point.  The reason is that almost every game engine is designed to render very good graphics with about 25-50 people.  There simply isn't a game engine that is designed to handle large scale battles.  So, if the vision of the game is large scale battles, why would you buy an engine (like say, the Hero Engine) that would make it impossible to do such a thing?  That's extremely dumb.   Ever try playin in Ilum on SWTOR with that Hero Engine?  Just terribad, which is why all the PvP now is instanced.

Searching on the word "forever" on Kickstarter, as of the time of this post, there were:

594 Warrior Forever ($250)

135 Hero Forever ($350)

9 Physical Phat Loot Forever ($450)

99 Whole Shmear (Hero Forever $500)

So, currently there are going to be 837 people with the lifetime subs, or about 15% of the current kickstarter pledges.

I did the $250 digital copy life-time sub option.  If you have the coin, I think it's one of the best options available.  If the game is $50 and $15 a month after the first month, you'll spend $50 + (11x$15) = $215 in the first year on the game. So, for $35 more, I get a lifetime sub combined with founder points and access to Alpha testing?

With most PvP oriented games, I tend to play them about a year, then I stop because they keep introducing gear-grinds from PvE to continue to compete in PvP.  This game says it wont do that, so I suspect I could play this game longer than a year.  Hence the life-time sub is really cheap from that perspective.

The only way the life-time sub option isn't going to be worth it is if the game sucks donkey balls when released.  However, should it ever get improved, you can easily jump back in later.

I don't mind having some CC in the game.  Some being the key word.

Furthermore, you have to have a class in each realm that is pretty much immune to CC, like a lightly armored melee DPS.  Plus, the less CC you put in the game, the less effective interrupts should be on people like casters and archers.  Perhaps you don't fully interrupt them, but you slow their casting speed down by 50%.

Back in DAOC where CC was super powerful, it made sense that once a caster/archer was under attack, you were shut down. It would be unfair to have hardly any CC combined with the ability to permanately interrupt a caster/archer.  

Yes, when I really think about vikings, I must admit feathers don't really seem to come to mind.  I know we want to try to think outside-the-box on vikings, I get it, but feathers seem a bit out of place.   

The feathers seem to be placed around the exit points for flesh, so it assumes some kind of comfort level for the wearer.  Vikings and comfort don't mix.   Fur/pelts around the edges might be better suited.    Perhaps as the level of the armor improves, the type of animal fur/pelt changes.   Perhaps at the highest end of armor, you have a bear pelt or something, and a mid-tier armor would be a wolf pelt, and a low-teir armor would be a rabbit pelt or something.

The good thing about pelts versus feathers is that if you want to dye the pelt to change its color, that seems realistic.  You can't really "dye" feathers without destroying them.

Not sure how you can "hype" a game that hasn't even been determined if it will actually be made at this point.  Until CSE commits fully to making CU (by reaching the $2m kickstarter goal), no point in hyping it.

Furthermore, the kickstarter campaign is designed to test whether or not there is enough interest in having a pure RvR game.  If it can't get $2m in committments, then it shows that there aren't enough people who want that kind of game, and MJ will not have to spend $2m of his own money on the game.

So, hype meters might be interesting, but the ultimate hype meter is the kickstarter campaign.  

Originally posted by Nihilist

I agree that a lot of people out there won't be able to get past the concept of no PVE. MMOers are just so accustomed to the comfort of the rail PVE quest grind.

 

Its also true that not that many people will appreciate the design concepts outlined in the FPs as opposed to a flashy gameplay video.

 

I suppose that is the risk of taking a niche game that requires strong MMO RvR knowledge to KS.

I think the weird thing about it is that while players might be so used to PvE grind that they don't know how to adopt to something else, I'm pretty sure that developers have seen the financial pitfalls of a PvE game and are doing everything they can to minimize PvE themeparks going forward.   It just isn't financially viable to make a WoW clone, as proven time and time again.  Content cannot be created fast enough.

Somehow, the success of EVE and other sandbox oriented games MUST become the mainstream MMO, purely for financial reasons.  PvE grind games are going to be a thing of the past.

As crazy as it sounds, most players prefer PvE.  Even today when I play DAOC on a not-to-be-mentioned-on-MMORPG.COM-server, most folks are rolling alts doing PvE.  When I bring up CU on that server that I can't mention on MMORPG because i'll be banned, the #1 complaint is the no-PvE aspect of the game; "every game needs some PvE" is the common reply.

If you look at WAR, most folks did PvE 90% of the time.  Even going back to Shadowbane, where I was in a guild dedicated to PvP only action and we recruited PvP only players, we still had folks who would log out of thier guild toons and log on an alt to get their PvE fix. 

Yet, when you read forums, or listen to people boast about how they love to do PvP, remember that almost all of them also like to PvE, but they don't mention it because it's not cool to like PvE.

All I'm trying to say is that a game that is 100% PvP w/crafting isn't going to appeal to that many people.  I think it will be a close call to see if they hit the $2 million mark by the end of the month.  

I think what the developer is saying is something akin to this example:

Suppose you have a green helm, red torso, blue pants and yellow boots.   That's 4 different "mesh" patterns that would ask the  computer to draw 4 different things when it moves.  Instead, think of it as outfit #2310, which is an outfit predefined as a green helm, red torso, blue pants and yellow boots.  Thus, the computer is asked to draw outfit #2310, which is simply 1 drawing.  As a result, you've decreased the workload to 1 draw versus 4 draws for the same character.

Now, that's like a super duper simplified example, but that's what he means by having the whole thing as a unique mesh.  Hence, people will still look different, but from a computer point of view they are just changing outfits.

Also, you have to remember that in an early update about a month or so ago they said that they going with performance first, so initial testing is being done with very basic landscape, textures, etc.   They will then add as much of that stuff as possible but performance (FPS) has to remain above a certain threshold once you have around 150-200 players in a select region.  So, you might have detailed characters and less detailed landscapes or vice versa. Every level of detail reduces FPS, so it's a tradeoff.

The other big tradeoff they have to deal with is how much to put on the client and how much to put on the server.  People can't be trusted, so most of this has to go to the server. So, even if they have a good engine, crappy server code will cause ability delay lag, which is just as bad as low FPS.  That's why he also addresses the way the server has to change how it calculates things like AoE effects and such. 

Let me define cosmetic for those who can't figure it out:

Cosmetic means that said item, priority status, etc. does not give you an advantage when fighting another player.  Having extra storage space is probably an advantage for a crafter (size of advantage up for debate), but it doesn't do anything to the outcome of a fight.

I'm sure if anyone sees an item, ability, priority that allows a player to have an advantage in a fight with another player, that's crossing the line between cosmetic and needed.   It's a PvP game after all, and crossing that line is a big, big deal.

Look, this game is a huge flop from a financial point of view.  Most everyone on the project were fired, laid off, re-assigned, etc. It has many reasons for the flop.  Heck, the CEO had to resign a few days ago.

The good news is that if you enjoy the game (big if), then the cartel shop and their semi-free model have stopped the game from shutting down, for now.   I think that's the point of the presentation: to minimize fears that the game was going to be cancelled entirely, which was a real risk.  I mean, EA used to say that it would require 500,000 subs to be profitable.  I'd bet it's far less than that currently but with the reduced staff levels they can probably get by with maybe 250-300,000 or maybe even less if the cartel shop is really successful.

For the haters, the good news is that this financial disaster might actually stop MMOs from being developed with bad engines, high-expense PvE content that everyone burns through in 30-days, and MMO companies start to make exciting sand-box games. For me, the upside to the disaster of SWTOR makes me look forward to the future of upcoming MMO games.  I really doubt we'll see another AAA WoW clone for a long, long time.

You have to remember that PC games still represent a small % of EA's profits.  Still, you don't spend $200m+ on a game and have it flop like SWTOR without expecting some heads to roll.

I tried coming back and doing the F2P, but it was just too restrictive to make the game fun.  I enjoyed Warzones more than the PvE, and combined with the gear restriction the warzones were too few and I was at a huge disadvantage.

I might go back to being a paid sub if they fixed the class balance problem. It still remains only certain classes/roles are desired for ranked warzones.  If you aren't that class in a specific role, you wont get into a ranked warzone group.  That's a clear indication that there is a class balance problem, and EA refuses to acknowlege the issue.. 

This game had a few major problems within the first year of launch that just hurt it so much, nobody really wants to try it again.

First, you had performance issues for many players. Exceptional lag, disconnects, game crashes, etc.

Second, you had gross imbalance of classes such as Bright Wizards.  It was stupid overpowered and the other side would just quit.  And when you have a 2-sided faction war, and one side quits, the server dies, they merge it with another, then it dies, and merge it again, and again.

I played both empire and chaos, and it was simply overwhelming to see the differences when you played on both sides.   When they announced Land of the Dead, another gear grind for a PvP game, me and most of my guild finally gave up on the game.  Looks like most everyone has given up on this game.

I suppose had they done it right at the start with more balanced classes and had true 3-way PvP battles, combined with less performance problems, the game might have done a lot better.

Originally posted by Yamota

One suit down, houndreds left who will take his spot.

EA is the symbol of big corps who favour profits over good games so this will most likely not change anything. They will continue to buy up, and destroy, good gaming companies to make a profit. They are the vulture capitalists of gaming.

Sorry, but this is just really really misguided.   If a game is very popular, it will make lots of profits.   Equating good games with low profits is just silly.  Low profit because the games are bad.  You seem to have it backwards.

EA certainly thought, as did many companies, that copying the success of WoW (which is very profitable because it was/is a good game), would make them lots of money.  Instead, they found out that it was either really hard to copy WoW or just too expensive (e.g., SWTOR and voice acting).  Once they spent $100m, $200m or so, they had to eventually release it.  How much would you prefer they spend? 

Going forward, companies are looking to copy Eve Online, where the development expense is low and the players make the content, which is of course quite profitable.  

Under your analysis, game companies should just make games and lose money.  Yeah, that's gonna work.

First, in CU you have to remember that there are no levels, so you aren't "ganking" lowbies or anything.  So all that fear of a stealther ganking you is just that, a fear from the past.  A relic of past games that is gone.

Second, stealthers in general are weaker than visible classes (otherwise, everyone would invite stealthers into their groups).  Their advantage is stealth, allowing them to target at the optimal time. 

Thus, a stealther using no tactics whatsoever and just willy-nilly attacks anyone anytime is going to lose the majority of the time, simply because their class is weaker.  A stealther who uses tactics to select the right target and the right time to attack will usually win.   So now you want to nerf tactics?

Finally, on the front of realism.  First, you could argue that they should have to hide behind stuff.  Well, okay, but the graphics required to put tall grass, bushes and all the other things needed to make it realistic would slow down FPS to an insanely low level.  Second, if you didn't have a bunch of this stuff, then you'd make stealth worthless.   So, the compromise is to make stealth a bit unrealistic by allowing them to be invisible, where you assume they are hiding behind stuff that the game just doesn't render.

Or, you could argue that they learn a secret magic of invisibility that most wizards never learn, and that rogues hold this secret tightly and share it only with others in their guild.  

Either way, stealth isn't overpowered if not combined with decent tactics and it's not unrealistic for a fantasy game. It is a game after all, not real life.

Well, the "end game" is now "the game".   What's interesting about it is that I probably spent about 5% of my total time playing the pre-game, and 95% of my time playing the end game.   Yet, the costs of the pre-game make up about 95% of the budget and about 5% of the budget was typically devoted to the end game.  It seems to work well in EvE.

So, we shall see if having 95% of the budget dedicated to the end game in an MMO works again or is EvE just an annomoly like WoW was an annomoly for PvE focused MMOs.   Funny how people went from trying to copy WoW to now trying to copy EvE.