Camelot Unchained MMO

pyksel_sl said:

I haven't followed Star Citizen but I did skim through all 13 pages of updates and they have made good progress for a single player game. I particularly liked their early spaceport concept art to 3D environment test. Wouldn't a more realistic comparison be Pathfinder Online though when you compare the progression of one game in the genre to another game in the genre?

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Star Citizen is going to have a multiplayer/online type of functionality as well as a single player part. Not really an MMORPG, but kind of like one that is heavily instanced.

Tmac47_sl said:

This pretty much sums up the negativity, but at least Ut's honest about it.

He could've invited Mark on his web-show, kissed his ass, then turned around and talked shit about him, but Ut's above that

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roflmao

I'm really interested if they can get this done in the time frame they promised. The most interesting thing to see is that if a niche game is done right, will it actually become more main stream? I think a lot of people want MMO's to branch out into more sub-genres. As far as the negativity in this thread, that's every fucking MMO thread lol.

Tmac47_sl said:

This pretty much sums up the negativity, but at least Ut's honest about it.

He could've invited Mark on his web-show, kissed his ass, then turned around and talked shit about him, but Ut's above that

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I know it seems hard for you to parse, but I haven't talked shit about Mark Jacobs at all. That has been Ut and Denaut. I am incredibly skeptical of the whole process though, and I think I've been consistent with that.

What I am negative about is people buying into the whole thing hook line and sinker based on just a few game philosophy discussions. I would think people on this forum would be experience enough to jump in head first.

Are some of Mark Jacobs ideas good ones? Yes. Are some of them based on pure fantasy? Yes. Are a lot of them impractical. Yes. Are there some things I'm genuinely excited about that could make a really good game? Absolutely. But right now I'm taking the track record of DAOC and WAR, whether that's fair or not, and mix that together with a lot of pie in the sky promises, ideas and forming an opinion.

I have nothing against Mark. The more people making games the better. I think it's great someone is trying to target a very niche market. It's just that I can't help injecting reality into these projects and it's just flabergasting to see people not doing that.

Abefroman_sl said:

I'm really interested if they can get this done in the time frame they promised. The most interesting thing to see is that if a niche game is done right, will it actually become more main stream? I think a lot of people want MMO's to branch out into more sub-genres. As far as the negativity in this thread, that's every fucking MMO thread lol.

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According to what Mark is stating, they are well ahead of schedule thanks to Andrew's coding but it's still way too early to tell. I think one of the things to keep in mind is there will be no PvE levelling so in terms of content, I believe the plan is to make it non-existent. When you cut that piece out of it I can only imagine that the development cycle shortens dramatically. Perhaps someone in the industry can actually comment on the effects of having it (or not in this case) in the game?

Not that I know for sure, but it depends on how complicated the housing/property system they want to make is. That whole blueprint and building system can easily replace the development cycle of creating dungeons, quests and other PVE content.

I don't think he's fooling anyone. If he really believes that people are going to think these discussions are the second coming he's either egotistical, short-sighted, or both. I think Mark Jacobs has to earn everything just as much as Brad, SoE, and anyone else that has made empty promises.

I agree, they are good discussions and I would love to see a lot of it but it's all been discussed before and it simply comes down to execution. He has his money now so he'll have to make it happen. He'll need to get real and get real quick with EQNext and Titan announcements on the horizon. He'll be easily forgotten and need to pray that these up and coming projects dwindle out before he can make any waves. I'll continue enjoying the reads but at the moment, i'll need to see it to believe it.

Tmac47_sl said:

I'm NOT fanboi'ing by the way.

I'd just like people's take on these features, as I thought were pretty cool, from a design/technical aspect.

It seems like everyone's talking shit without actually discussing the features that are "bad" and I'm tired of hearing, "Oh, Mark Jacobs... Can't wait to see this game fail. Now I'm going to talk shit about it without using any specific examples."

I did your job for you. Discuss.

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I actually took the time to watch the videos and read what you posted and to me it is just a random collection of vague and incomplete ideas. I love discussing designs in particular and design processes in general, but there is little to talk about here. So I will just kind of briefly go over my thoughts.

The building thing is neat, but it is just a client side tech demo, nothing really, I probably shouldn't say this but my company has that in our tech and it is fully multiplayer. Its fun to play with but it isn't a system, design or game, those are different things and require much more time, effort, and skill to pull together. It skips over all sorts of basic questions like what is the core purpose of a building, what do they do, why and how do they interact with players and the world, what gameplay purpose does it serve, what player fantasy does it fulfill, and how does it interact with your moment to moment gameplay.

The stealth thing again is just a vague undeveloped concept that isn't really a stealth system. It is a sort of way-gate dual world system, which does sound cool but it is this sort of random thing that just exists alongside all of these other random elements. What is the shadow realm? What, specifically, about this better than normal stealth and why? What problems does normal stealth have that this fixes? So on, I have more questions than anything, and I could probably answer some of them myself if I cared enough.

The harvesting is extremely basic and no better than WoW, except zoned, which means people will spend most of their time in holes in the ground away from eachother. There isn't much to say about that other than it sounds extremely tedious. He still hasn't mentioned a single thing about the core moment-to-moment gameplay of crafting, which has always been the hard part. I assume that combat core gameplay is DAoC (which is outdated at this point), but what is the moment-to-moment gameplay of crafting? Is it something like SWG which was less about crafting and more about harvesting/logistics? Is it some sort of mini-game? Why would a player want to be a full-time crafter, what is there to draw those people in?

The essential problem with the features he mentions is that he always talks about theresultsof player actions, the end chain of a series of things. Never about the details, how players get there, why they do these things, what motivates them, and how these things interact. That is the easy part, very easy, so easy you guys do it on this board every day and I enjoy reading about it. But you guys aren't professional designers, you aren't asking for money, you are just talking and having fun. You can't just skip all of the other stuff and pretend that it will magically work itself out, that leads to promising things you can't deliver. I say this from both a technical and design perspective, you can't run game development this way and expect good results.

What I wouldliketo see is him take just one of these MANY features he mentions and lay out how it will work stem to stern, why it works this way, what are its benefits and potential problems, then how they intend to mitigate those potential problems. The details matter, they matter A LOT, and if you just keep skipping around "designing cool things" before working out the details or kinks of the previous system then you end up with 100 20% developed features instead of 20 fully developed features. This is a problem, a big one, one that leaves me with absolutely no confidence in the project.

I criticize it so harshly because CU is such a fantastic public case study on how not to design a game, and yet it is somehow taking so many people in.

Mark just pumped in 2 mil of his own money and another mil from outside investors. The paypal campaign is going on now, so probably 5.5 to 6 mil total. Not nearly enough for a finished product.

Going to be interesting to see what he does with that amount and what it will take to finish it. Eventually he's going to need to get other investors on board. Mark seems to be doing everything on the cheap so wont be burning through 38Studio type piles of cash, but even so that 6 mil is going to run out fast.

Denaut_sl said:

The stealth thing again is just a vague undeveloped concept that isn't really a stealth system. It is a sort of way-gate dual world system, which does sound cool but it is this sort of random thing that just exists alongside all of these other random elements. What is the shadow realm? What, specifically, about this better than normal stealth and why? What problems does normal stealth have that this fixes? So on, I have more questions than anything, and I could probably answer some of them myself if I cared enough.

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The stealth systemsoundscool. It does not adress the problems with stealth he summed up beforehand, though. So its a good example for missing the goal he sets out for that design. If you are a non-stealth cloth class at various stages of different games that meant being victimized by rogues. People complain about the surprise and stun factor alot and rogue kills get more negative reactions from the user. He wants to change that. So the solution is to force the rogue through a mini-game entirely independant of the combat with the cloth caster, but once the rogue completes that he can still do the same thing to the caster he could with stealth just being invis. On the victim side nothing has changed and the complaints and negativity will be the same. That kinda supports the arguments about him that Ut and Denaut put forth.

When I interviewed him, I tried to get him to talk about what a crafter actually does while playing. He didn't have an answer and glossed over it. I still want to know. I think he plans on crafters acting like a class. Like instead of pressing buttons to cast fireballs and attack enemies, you're pressing buttons to build traps/weapons/whatever for the people pressing buttons to cast fireballs.

That's all I got from him.

Mr Creed_sl said:

He wants to change that. So the solution is to force the rogue through a mini-game entirely independant of the combat with the cloth caster, but once the rogue completes that he can still do the same thing to the caster he could with stealth just being invis. On the victim side nothing has changed and the complaints and negativity will be the same...

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Much more well said and specific than what I talked about.

This supports my major point, he just kind of has random ideas that sound cool on the very surface. He doesn't thing about games, about what problems there are, why they are there, and how they can be solved.Identifyingthe real problem with a mechanic or feature is extremely hard, but a critical first step to making a better game. It is pretty common to see the misidentification of problems on this board, especially when it comes to older games like EQ and DAoC, but that is fine because you guys are gamers not professional developers, it isn't your job to find the root of why something didn't work (or worked for that matter) and implement it in a better way.

Mr Creed_sl said:

The stealth systemsoundscool. It does not adress the problems with stealth he summed up beforehand, though. So its a good example for missing the goal he sets out for that design. If you are a non-stealth cloth class at various stages of different games that meant being victimized by rogues. People complain about the surprise and stun factor alot and rogue kills get more negative reactions from the user. He wants to change that. So the solution is to force the rogue through a mini-game entirely independant of the combat with the cloth caster, but once the rogue completes that he can still do the same thing to the caster he could with stealth just being invis. On the victim side nothing has changed and the complaints and negativity will be the same. That kinda supports the arguments about him that Ut and Denaut put forth.

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I won't list all of the issues that Mark did and how he plans to address them but I will hit some of the highlights. You can't remain permanently stealthed as you will continue to take damage while in the Veil. The Veil will also throw challenges at you but he didn't specify outside of stating that the Veil is alive and is pissed off that you're in it. The Veil will also do MORE damage the closer you are to other stealthers of your realm as to discourage gank groups to some degree. He also mentioned that you can't just jump in and out so there will be no vanish per say. He also stated that upon exiting the Veil you may have some sort of debuff that will prevent you from going "stabby stabby" as he put it.

I know the details are a bit vague but there's a lot more information out there riddled throughout his videos so it kind of sucks trying to find it.

I kickstarted it for $5

pyksel_sl said:

I won't list all of the issues that Mark did and how he plans to address them but I will hit some of the highlights. You can't remain permanently stealthed as you will continue to take damage while in the Veil. The Veil will also throw challenges at you but he didn't specify outside of stating that the Veil is alive and is pissed off that you're in it. The Veil will also do MORE damage the closer you are to other stealthers of your realm as to discourage gank groups to some degree. He also mentioned that you can't just jump in and out so there will be no vanish per say. He also stated that upon exiting the Veil you may have some sort of debuff that will prevent you from going "stabby stabby" as he put it.

I know the details are a bit vague but there's a lot more information out there riddled throughout his videos so it kind of sucks trying to find it.

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This sounds... pretty terrible. There are other ways to implement stealth that work, are more simple, and more interesting. See cover in League of Legends or the camouflage system from World of Tanks for examples.


Specifically speaking to this system... what is the purpose of stealth? That seems to be a basic unanswered question. Traditionally stealth was a method of closing/escaping for melee characters that were otherwise squishy. According to this design, stealth is bad for attacking or escaping... so what is it for then? Well, it SOUNDS to me like stealth is for traveling. So why is it called stealth, the Veil seems FAR more suited to a method of fast travel akin The Way fromWheel of Timeor The Nether in Minecraft. Thought of this way you can make an interesting fast travel system, but it still has nothing to do with stealth, so why is he calling it a stealth system? It doesn't make any sense, this is what I mean about him being incoherent and contradictory.