Originally posted by Marker

dont let u foul by what they say. It easy to talk harder to do. IN 4 YEars since realease in 2005 from what i read Little has changed and actualy in KFR statment he wants a re-release which means what i posted many time until now. RV was IN beta testing. A payable betatesting.

Oh oh and another thing. IF u play Barbarian u do a big mistake. KFr dont like barbarians and if u criticize him u get banned. IF ur roman and kiss his GOD feets ur not banned even if u use third party soft that makes u Uber soldier. Think twice before  buying this CRAP

You sure have been logged in a lot for someone who hates the game so much.  Most people don't spend 8 hours a day in a game they hate.  Perhaps being suspended from the RV forums on multiple accounts for repeated foul languange and belligerent behavior have caused you to seek attention here.

I saw on the RV news that you got killed just a bit ago.  The entire community is bereaved.  I heard some people say it made a great case for perma-death.  If the game is so bad, maybe you should ragequit....please.

August State of the World

From KFR:

First off I must apologise for not getting to do this SotW sooner. So much was up in the air that we effectively had to maintain radio silence while we worked out just what the future was going to hold for us all. In short, we didn't want to make any promises or commitments that we couldn't stick to and it's been a while since we had a good handle on how we were going to proceed. That'll hopefully help to explain why we've all been so quiet on the forums - particularly in recent weeks. Secondly I'd like to thank you all for your continued support in the form of community efforts and VERM contributions - both are massively appreciated. Now, if you'll bear with me, this SotW is probably going to be a little longer than usual but it's worth it - buried within is some seriously exciting news!

I'll start by setting the scene. When we started development of Roma Victor there weren't too many options when it came to 3D rendering middleware and those engines that did exist were either unaffordable, unsuited to big seamless virtual worlds or both. So we had to hire a contractor to help us build our very own renderer to our specification. We were lucky enough to come across Jooky who is a one-man coding army and he ended up building the entire 3D engine for the Roma Victor client all by himself, which is no small achievement as any programmers amongst you will understand.

Since that time 3D engines have come a long way - and so have we. We always knew that in order to get Roma Victor to where we wanted it to be we'd have to make a far greater commitment to development than was allowed by the resources and finances that we had available. Roma Victor has never paid its way - in fact it hasn't even come close to recouping the huge personal investment that I and others have made. This has made it very difficult, if not impossible, for us to provide the significant updates and improvements to Roma Victor that we'd all like to see. So much so that when we could no longer afford to regularly and reliably pay Jooky, he began - quite understandably - to lose interest in both RedBedlam and Roma Victor, which in turn meant that client updates were less frequent and somewhat less satisfactory.

Now, I'm going to take a moment here to whip out a rather tired talking point that some of you will have doubtless heard me ranting about before. MMO's are hard. The technologies involved are insanely complicated - the organisational complexity of the various internal systems is pretty intense - and of course there are plenty of other resource hurdles that are more to do with design, content, community management and customer service than technology. This is why most MMO's don't even make it out of the door before the financiers pull the plug on whatever project is experiencing massive time and cost overruns. Just to give you some idea of how stark the statistics look, as far as business-launched virtual worlds go, fully 90% of them fail within their first 18 months. And almost all of the successful MMO's have had tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into them in order to get them off the ground.

So I am immensely proud of what our meagre team of a handful of enthusiastic and brilliant people - only a couple of whom have ever been dedicated to RV full-time - have achieved in developing, producing and releasing our own historically authentic real-time persistent MMORPG. We, for a tiny fraction of the cost and man-power, have achieved something that many huge multi-national corporations have either failed to do, have wasted millions attempting to do, or shied away from doing altogether.

With that having been said, the two most significant problems we've faced since Roma Victor's launch have been the various challenges presented by this lack of resources and the technical limitations of our own proprietary 3D engine, which is after all, the work of just one man. With that in mind I've spent much of my time in recent weeks and months attempting to do two things. On the one hand I've been trying to maximise RedBedlam's potential, turn it into a profitable business and thereby resolve the lack-of-resources problem. On the other hand I've also been trying to find a superior client solution.

Well, now I finally have some pretty good news on both fronts. RedBedlam's Virtiverse and ZoneBubble server technologies are beginning to attract some considerable attention from both existing and aspiring VW and MMO developers and, as a result, the business is finally beginning to take off after what feels like an eternity stuck in R&D. We've moved into new, albeit rather humble, offices and at long last most of the core team, which itself has grown a little, are now working in the same place on a daily basis. All of this means that we now have more time and resources to invest in RV and the technology platform upon which it relies.

The second bit of good news is probably the most immediately exciting as far as this community is concerned. As part of my quest to resolve RV's long-standing issues I've been on the hunt for a more up-to-date rendering engine for our client. It's not an easy hunt because the requirements aren't as close to those of conventional video game development as you might think and the list of appropriate engines is already pretty small. Most of them we either can't afford to pay for or can't afford to devote the considerable resources required to integrate them into our systems and customise them to suit our needs. A few months ago all that changed when we discovered one particular solution that could serve all of our needs most admirably. In fact it blew me away and one day I'll take the time to list all of the amazing game-changing things about this particular solution. It's pretty special.

I don't want to go into too much detail about it just yet but I can definitely confirm that the development of an entirely new Roma Victor client is well underway, and has been for a while. Now, I'll make an official announcement about this new client a little later in the year - we've still got a few things to negotiate and iron out - but in the meantime I wanted to share some of the excitement we're feeling with you guys just as soon as I could.

So I had Gally grab some screenshots and put together a little demo video to show off the new engine, which you'll find a link to at the end of this post. While we're on the subject of Gally I should probably point out that the reason he too has been quieter on the forums of late is that I've hauled him into even more of a production role and he's now spending most of his time managing the art pipeline and organising production across three projects. For one thing, all of our existing art assets need to be re-exported in a different format, which is pretty straightforward if you know what you're doing, but it is also pretty time-consuming and so it really is a case of 'all hands on deck' - especially since updating RV is not the only project we've got going on. As a result, Gally will be spending a lot less time answering forum questions and a lot more time actually building stuff, which is not to say that he won't be popping in from time to time with new screenshots and videos of our progress.

As I mentioned, I'll make an official and more detailed announcement about the new client another time but there are a few things that I can certainly shed some light on right now. Let's start by listing just a few of the most exciting changes brought by the new client solution:

• None of the existing client-side bugs have been carried over to the new client
• Much higher performance all around - older machines will experience much higher frame rates and newer machines will be able to enjoy a very high level of graphical detail and still see higher frame rates when compared to the current client
• Hugely increased view distances
• Multi-platform - available for both Mac OSX and all modern versions of Windows (!)
• Full support for multiple display resolutions including widescreen
• Anti-aliasing
• Anisotropic filtering
• Transparency, reflections and refraction - water surfaces look fantastic
• Dynamic shadows
• Real-time dynamic lighting
• Natural-looking fog and distance fogging
• Vastly improved 3D surround sound system
• New improved user interface
• New particle effects
• New ground surfaces
• New trees, grasses, bushes and boulder objects
• New shader effects including bump mapping and specular highlights
• Greatly reduced load times

Now that all sounds great but I know what you're thinking. So when's this gonna happen? We've heard nice things before and they've taken months to materialise - all this stuff sounds like it'll take RedBedlam years to get out the door. When will we actually see some of it? Well I have good, and probably somewhat surprising news on that front too. Internally we're already testing the new client and it's already about 80% feature complete. So here's the plan. In early October we'll make the free trial islands available - via the new client - to existing RV participants for testing. It won't be entirely feature complete at first but, depending on how things go, we're actually aiming to release the new client for RV proper maybe even before the end of this year at which time we'll do a proper re-launch in an attempt to bring in as many new players as possible.

OK cool, so what's all this going to cost? Well, again with the good news. Whilst this is a major update and has more in common with a sequel than just another client patch, by way of thanking Roma Victor veterans for sticking with us through thick and thin, we're not going to charge a penny for this update. When it's released we'll probably lift the special offer on account key prices (currently reduced to just £9.99) but that'll only affect new accounts.

Finally I should stress that the other oft-mentioned upcoming features and improvements that you already know we're working on are still very much part of the process. At any given time a couple of us have been dedicated to progressing things like construction, fortifications, hair, beards, boats, conquest overhaul, vigour/combat improvements, raids etc. The more keen-eyed among you will see clues to this in the video and screenshots linked below. Having now discovered our revised plans for the free trial you'll doubtless see why the free trial islands haven't been made available just yet. We didn't want the free trial to show how Roma Victor used to be, when it was just about to undergo the most significant update since the commercial test started back in 2005.

So hopefully this SotW post will go some way to explaining what we've been up to recently and with a bit of luck you'll be just as excited about all this as we are. For the first time in years I've been going to bed happy, pleased with Roma Victor's progress and looking forward to both Roma Victor and RedBedlam beginning to realise their full potential at long, long last. It only remains for me to share with you Gally's video and screenshots of the client that we've, with inspired originality, codenamed 'RV2'.
 

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvvneJ0OBPI&fmt=18

Apparently no one from MMORPG.com gives a crap about the discrepancies, as I pm'd the editors long ago about it, more than once.  Oh well.

Please note that some recent changes to RomaVictor mechanics have made some parts of the article obsolete. From RV server changelog:

The new diet system
-Food can be used to heal certain attributes faster or to buff existing attributes.
-Players will be able to eat up to 3 pieces of food depending on how hungry they have become.
-It is not possible to eat if your vigour is less than 50.
-Drinking water when thirsty now boosts vigour instead.
-Eating no longer boosts vigour.
-Buffs decay by one point per real minute.
-High quality well prepared foods may directly raise strength, shape or fitness.
-Wounds now recover at one point or more per real minute depending on where they are (guildhall, bathhouse etc).
-Major increases have been made to the effect of wound treatment - new physicians and doctors are encouraged to experiment.
 

The most notable change is that a player can no longer count on "stacking" buffs to compensate for weaknesses in character build. This makes some of the info on character creation no longer applicable.
 

Please note that some recent changes to RomaVictor mechanics have made some parts of the article obsolete.  From RV server changelog:

The new diet system
-Food can be used to heal certain attributes faster or to buff existing attributes.
-Players will be able to eat up to 3 pieces of food depending on how hungry they have become.
-It is not possible to eat if your vigour is less than 50.
-Drinking water when thirsty now boosts vigour instead.
-Eating no longer boosts vigour.
-Buffs decay by one point per real minute.
-High quality well prepared foods may directly raise strength, shape or fitness.
-Wounds now recover at one point or more per real minute depending on where they are (guildhall, bathhouse etc).
-Major increases have been made to the effect of wound treatment - new physicians and doctors are encouraged to experiment.

The most notable change is that a player can no longer count on "stacking" buffs to compensate for weaknesses in character build.  This makes some of the info on character creation no longer applicable.

The fact that combat can be over in 5-10 seconds is a major complaint of PvPers, particularly when combat often involves lengthy travel times to enemy territory.  However, RB stubbornly holds onto that concept, completely ignoring all the player feedback and pleas for tweaks and simple adjustments that would give players the opportunity to enjoy a fight for a bit longer.

So, your observation is correct.  I cannot explain why RB does it that way or justify them ignoring the mountains of negative player feedback on that particular issue.

Graphics are definitely not one of RV's strengths.  Players who place great importance on top quality graphics will not be happy with RV, that is for sure.

Supposedly RB's #1 priority right now is a trial server.  The vast majority of the playerbase is not very happy about it.  Players would always rather see bug fixes and content added. 

RomaVictor is definitely not for everyone.  There are no flashy graphics, the game has a significant amount of bugs, and it is simply a long way from being complete.  I would actually describe it as more of an ancient life sim than anything else.  It can be time consuming and tedious to get things done, because of the efforts to make the processes realistic.  It takes patience, that's for sure.  Gamers who are looking for a fast-paced game where they can be killing bad guys at every turn and getting gobs of loot will not like RV.

I love the game (and hate it sometimes) but I would recommend waiting for the free trial.  If they are going to bother making one, everyone who is interested should try it out for free to see if they like it, rather than roll the dice by purchasing an account.

The game world is very realistic, including the geography, architecture, and so on.  They just need to make more of the stuff craftable. 

Interested in RomaVictor?  Checking out RV guilds here is a good place to start:

http://www.mmorpg.com/guilds.cfm/game/20

I don't know.  I didn't make the game, and I don't run it.  I play it.  I am not satisfied with the state of the game, but I still like it and find it unique in a world of cookie-cutter fantasy games.

Gladiatorial games last month:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8DqMj_IR10

Perhaps someone has misunderstood.  I did not claim RV is a fast-paced, action packed game that is like a FPS with spears.  RB is none of the above.  I claimed there is more to do than just run around.

RV is part sandbox-style game, part historical MMO, and part ancient life sim.  It is not an instant gratification hack and slash.  It is much more about working together with others to achieve goals.

The game is not complete, and has some aggravating problems.  It has a long way to go before anyone could claim it is a finished product.  However, there is more to do than run around.

Maybe all you saw of the game was running around because that is all that's in the video, not because that is all there is in the game.

Originally posted by kitesurfer

Darkfall will kill this game.

 

Then go play it.  Darkfall is a fantasy game with elves and magic.  Some people are actually not interested in that.

Growing Roma Victor

The development team has spent most of its time in recent weeks on creating and enhancing the free trial experience. The free trial will run alongside Roma Victor as we know it and will consist of two separate islands that are not directly connected to the live Southern Caledonia (SEC) playfield. The Attending process will take place entirely on these islands for both guests and full participants although only accounts that have participant status will be able to transfer their characters to SEC. Neither items nor sesterces can be transferred between the trial islands and SEC. Also, skill development is capped on the islands and once a character has left it will naturally not be able to return.

We believe that one of the most significant barriers to Roma Victor really taking off is its rather modest population - many features would be much more fun and self-balancing if the population were a bit higher. We therefore feel quite strongly that making the game easy to get into is the most important thing to tackle first. So we've been spending quite a lot of time really trying to make this trial/newbie/attending process as smooth, fun and easy to learn as possible. As soon as the free trial is live, which might even happen before the end of this month/year, we will invite existing participants to create a new guest account, check out the process and let us know what you think because we are of course most keen to solicit the opinions of the real experts.

One of the added benefits of moving the Attending process into the trial islands is that we'll be able to clear up much of the low-level junk associated with learning the ropes from the starter settlements, which should actually make quite a significant performance improvement for extremely busy places like Corstopitum - particularly for those with older or lower specification computers.

Also, as some of you have noticed, I've recently been spending some time away from development in an effort to try and grow RedBedlam, which we need to do in order to expand our resources. We're a small independent developer but we still have great ambitions for Roma Victor and stepping things up a gear is important to all of us. To that end, and among many other things, we've taken on some extra help and in the coming weeks and months we hope to be providing more regular and concise communications, improved moderation and some long-awaited feature updates.

We really do appreciate the continued support of all Roma Victor participants and contributors. At times it may seem like some of the development team aren't listening, or are perhaps distracted by other priorities, but please take it from me that our devotion and commitment to this project has never faltered. On a personal level I have been pouring time, money and countless sleepless nights into this project for well over eight years now and I will go on doing so for as long as I continue to be inspired by the dedication, loyalty, patience and support of all of those who have played and worked on Roma Victor during that time.

And on that note, let's take a brief and non-exhaustive look at the changes implemented since my last SotW and some of the other things we've got to look forward to:

Recently Implemented Server Changes

• Facepainting
• Global mail and graffiti
• Access levels for guild warchests
• Jobs and the Labour Exchange
• Rumours
• Villages
• Patrols
• Territorial conquest
• Much more too numerous to mention - please see the server changelog thread for further details

Upcoming Server Changes

• Implementation of the trial/starter islands and free trial accounts
• Shifting the Attending process to the trial islands
• Both aesthetic and functional improvement to Elysium
• Improvements to cooking, diet and its effects
• An improved construction system paving the way for more structures including streets and fortifications
• Line, net and rod fishing
• Combat rankings and battle reports

Other items planned and underway

• Boats
• Injuries and injury treatment
• Improvements to animal handling and domestication including breeding etc.
• Battlecries
• Guild alliances and further support for guildwars
• Furniture
• Combustion
• Player music
• Hair and beards
• Tattoos
• Mounts

Client changes and fixes due in an imminent update

• Fix for third-person character animation bug (partially taking on other character's animations)
• Improved client-side buffering
• Significantly decreased chances of both the 'missing building' and 'jump' bugs occurring
• Limitations on climbing very steep slopes in order to add realism and increase the strategic importance of gradients including bridges, fords, ramparts etc.

The subsequent client version will include further optimisations and fixes including, among other things, an improvement to the dynamic lighting system.

Thanks!

-KFR

The first image in Part 2 is supposed to show a workaround for barbarian ethnicity from the character creation screen.  In editing the relevant part of the image was chopped off.  Below is a link to the image that shows the workaround:

http://img509.imageshack.us/my.php?image=char22correctionjz6.jpg

I have notified the editor that the link does not work.  Part 2 has already been submitted and should be up shortly.

Currently RB is working on a trial server.

This system has worked pretty well.  A lot of big loot scores have occured, with barbarians definitely benefitting the most, in my opinion.  Their hit and run raids have resulted in some major loot hauls. 

Originally posted by philjwill

Originally posted by philz50

As some players know, I am writing an RP history of RV.  Sometimes I create unique characteristics for "unsavory" characters.  Do you want to have lost a testicle in a fishing accident, or do you want to have been horribly scarred in a fire?  Just kidding.

 

Sounds cool, vlad, can I be the one legged no armed warrior in your history?

sad to see you banned for what seems to be a pretty stupid reason, socratus, You have my sympathy :(

ROFL.  You are already unique enough. 

The Trinovantes brought a lot to the game, both good and bad.   They deserve fair credit for both.  The bad...I'm going to leave that alone.  No sense kicking a dead horse.

They brought some action and excitement.  In a player-driven game, there is no substitute for it.  It helped out a lot.  For most of the 2 years since release, almost all action was driven by the 18th Legion.  It was a frustrating and grueling task.  There were two short stints by The Hundred basically driving the action, but other than that, it was just the 18th fueling PvP.  Then Trinovantes took the lead for a good 6 months or so, and RV benefitted greatly from that.   As a result, even Romans were able to accomplish a lot, with several Roman guilds developing much closer relations and teamwork that hasn't been seen since early release.  Without a powerful enemy, that most likely would not have happened.

The Trinovantes also pulled off some ground-breaking historical achievements that will not be forgotten.

As for the FPS stuff, I completely understand, though there is really no justification.  Deleting art files gives competitive advantages well beyond increasing FPS.  I just got a new pc last month.  Before that on my junk pc, I fought with 2-4 fps much of the time, with 8-10 being the best I could get.  It was very frustrating, especially when some cheater would kill me and say, "Get on my level noob."  I'm glad I didn't get on their level.

Best of luck in the future.

As some players know, I am writing an RP history of RV.  Sometimes I create unique characteristics for "unsavory" characters.  Do you want to have lost a testicle in a fishing accident, or do you want to have been horribly scarred in a fire?  Just kidding.

There's only one way to get banned for cheating, and that's by cheating.  People don't get banned because of abuse reports.  They get banned for CHEATING.  I could give a damn how "cool" a cheater is.  I would also rather have no one to fight than play against cheaters.

It's always the same with cheaters: their friends blindly defend them.  They try to justify the players' actions, rationalize, make excuses for them, or just refuse to accept it.  They blame everyone but the cheater because they are friends.  I mean, Christ...Roneth was a multiple offense cheater who had aleady been banned TWICE before and came back under new names to continue cheating.  How stupid.

Those players cheating is what ruins the game, not them getting banned.  Hey, here's a novel idea: just play the damn game and don't cheat.  Simple.

From KFR:

The following forum profiles have been permanently banned:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The following forum profiles have been suspended pending results of further investigations:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Owners of the suspended accounts are encouraged to contact us in order to help us proceed with the investigations.

DO NOT attempt to use third party applications to interfere with the operations of the Roma Victor service. DO NOT connect to our servers with an altered client.

Please note that many of the suspended accounts listed above may have been guilty of no more than sharing their account details with the cheaters. This in itself is grounds for a ban so we must once again remind everyone: DO NOT share your account details with anyone. When any accounts is used to break the terms of service and/or the license agreement the owner of the account must be held liable.

Thanks,

-KFR

More:

People deliberately tampered with the game client in order to gain an in-game competitive advantage over other players. They hacked. They cheated. If you'd like us to ignore that kind of activity then you're participating in the wrong community and you will not be missed when you (eventually) leave.

It is unfortunate but I don't see how it's our fault. If anyone wants to get mad, point the finger or call people names, I'd suggest that the two or three people that actually cheated would be a good choice. If they're friends of yours then I'm sorry - it's never easy when a friend lets you down but noone is more disappointed to see another disruption amongst this community than we are.

-KFR

Another quote:

I'll be clear. In response to player-submitted abuse reports, we checked the server logs and confirmed that the server had automatically created special logs concerning some streams that appeared to contain anomalous data. These streams were connected to Roneth/Ronneth and Theud69 and upon further investigation we confirmed that they had been cheating.

-KFR

This is not really all that noteworthy.  I just wanted to quote the official word from RB before the flaming and crying begins.  What it comes down to is that people cheated.  They got caught.  They got punished.  The end.