Trove: Scott's Trion on voxels

I wonder how many minecraft clones will be shoved out the door over the next couple years.

I'm not sure I get the point of this from Trion.

With Minecraft and Cube World, those people made those games with what they had available for minimal cost and few employees (husband and wife team/one guy), which is why they aren't fancy like EQN's voxels. The games look limited (visually) and in what they can do I'm guessing because they didn't have multi-million dollar budgets to create new engines or license expensive ones.

Trion is a full-fledged AAA mmo development studio and theyintentionallymake their brand new 2014 game to look like it was made in the 1980's by one guy? I know they say it was started by two employees in off-hours @ Trion, but I doubt they were the only two ever working on it there and giving input/aid.

When ArenaNet did it with GW2 for Super Adventure Fun Box, it was pretty nice and unexpected because it was essentially a one-off goof homage to games of that era, but why would I want to play a brand new mmo that already is dated when there are already two other games that pretty much do that already? If I want a world full of other people and destructible environments and combat that have a cutting edge to them, I'd just go to EQN. If I want old school, as said I'd go with the originals, not a clone.

And if I play Rift, why would I want to play with this when they already give me Dimensions that I like better?

I'm not sure anyone thought this through at Trion. Also, kind of bad taste because it seems they are kinda/sorta/maybe ripping off the Cube World people. I don't know, maybe it is time to just Fuck the Indie Guy instead of going into business with them or something.

Everything Scott touches turns to gold. You guys bet against him all you want.

not sure I agree.

I think the more simple squares allows much more initiative player interaction with the environment. While the Landmark visually looks great, but actually creating things in it, will likely be 10x as much work as well.
I think its pretty important that games like minecraft, terraria, etc, can be broken down to countable blocks. if you want to make a 10x10 room. you can literally count them out.
I'm a bit concerned landmark stepped too far away from legos.

Jait_sl said:

Everything Scott touches turns to gold. You guys bet against him all you want.

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Must be hard for him to piss then.

Caliane_sl said:

not sure I agree.

I think the more simple squares allows much more initiative player interaction with the environment. While the Landmark visually looks great, but actually creating things in it, will likely be 10x as much work as well.
I think its pretty important that games like minecraft, terraria, etc, can be broken down to countable blocks. if you want to make a 10x10 room. you can literally count them out.
I'm a bit concerned landmark stepped too far away from legos.

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I don't think people (mass people) want Legos.. again. They already got that.

Hell, if they don't get enough from Minecraft or Cubeworld or even ones like 3DDot, they can actually play.. Legos.

Most of the mass is looking for the next gen of game idea and Minecraft had the right idea, just not big enough pockets to pull the wider group (not that they were trying). SoE is trying to recreate WoW in a different medium by letting players create this time, instead of just suggesting to the devs. Landmark is a separate game but it seems it's the primer for EQN in a lot of ways, so it has to get away from LEGOLAND.

I think there will be combat in Landmark as well, not raiding but combat so again, I don't see where Trion is benefitting from any of this overall other than voxels are 'hip'. But what Dakholdt said reminds me of a line in O Brother, Where Art Thou?:


Discussing how to counter Homer Stokes' campaign for governor]

Junior O'Daniel: We could hire our own midget, even shorter than his.
Pappy O'Daniel: Wouldn't we look like a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies, bragging on our own midget, doesn't matter how stumpy.

This makes me think of Trion right now.

Trion gonna Trion

Caliane_sl said:

not sure I agree.

I think the more simple squares allows much more initiative player interaction with the environment. While the Landmark visually looks great, but actually creating things in it, will likely be 10x as much work as well.
I think its pretty important that games like minecraft, terraria, etc, can be broken down to countable blocks. if you want to make a 10x10 room. you can literally count them out.
I'm a bit concerned landmark stepped too far away from legos.

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Well, as far as voxel building goes, I would rather be in the shoes of the dude building a giant defensible tower in a few minutes than laying an even number of blocks in a row countless times until I have something that looks like a wall or a building. If Landmark dude wants to min/max his styling ability he can go into more detail with the tower and the land around it, shaping and forming it to his desire, then smoothing the edges so that it looks like something straight out of a fantasy movie. Not that I have anything against giant pixels or cubes, but I'm ready to try something different. If I want to build with blocks, Minecraft or Terraria would be a safe bet. Landmark will give us straight up MMORPG grade dev tools for building worlds.

Sorry, didn't mean to turn any discussion toward Trove vs. Landmark, but at least they are related in a way. Maybe Trove will be awesome, I don't know. It just seems like there's a lot of saturation in the voxel market as of late.

This has been done.. and done... and done. There's no point to this and no offense to them, Minecraft has been out for a long time and now Landmark which is kind of the next step (visually and conceptually) has been announced, what's the point?

I guess I just feel this is a waste of good resources.

Bruman_sl said:

Really expensive alpha access.

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sick burn!

misery_sl said:

Well, as far as voxel building goes, I would rather be in the shoes of the dude building a giant defensible tower in a few minutes than laying an even number of blocks in a row countless times until I have something that looks like a wall or a building. If Landmark dude wants to min/max his styling ability he can go into more detail with the tower and the land around it, shaping and forming it to his desire, then smoothing the edges so that it looks like something straight out of a fantasy movie. Not that I have anything against giant pixels or cubes, but I'm ready to try something different. If I want to build with blocks, Minecraft or Terraria would be a safe bet. Landmark will give us straight up MMORPG grade dev tools for building worlds.

Sorry, didn't mean to turn any discussion toward Trove vs. Landmark, but at least they are related in a way. Maybe Trove will be awesome, I don't know. It just seems like there's a lot of saturation in the voxel market as of late.

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then why aren't you making modules/mods in skyrim, Neverwinter online, sc2, dragon age, shadowrun, etc? "dev tools", campaign building tools, and SDK's for building worlds are available in a TON of games.
I think the simplicity of minecraft/terraria is a huge part of its appeal. or at least it starts simply, and you add the complexity.

I like the idea of being able to make stuff, but I'm not excited about playing in a giant, cartoon lego universe where people can build space shuttles in the middle of the forest. How does this appeal to RPG players? Must have a different target audience than old ass RP gamers like me.

misery_sl said:

Well, as far as voxel building goes, I would rather be in the shoes of the dude building a giant defensible tower in a few minutes than laying an even number of blocks in a row countless times until I have something that looks like a wall or a building. If Landmark dude wants to min/max his styling ability he can go into more detail with the tower and the land around it, shaping and forming it to his desire, then smoothing the edges so that it looks like something straight out of a fantasy movie. Not that I have anything against giant pixels or cubes, but I'm ready to try something different. If I want to build with blocks, Minecraft or Terraria would be a safe bet. Landmark will give us straight up MMORPG grade dev tools for building worlds.

Sorry, didn't mean to turn any discussion toward Trove vs. Landmark, but at least they are related in a way. Maybe Trove will be awesome, I don't know. It just seems like there's a lot of saturation in the voxel market as of late.

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It's not really a fair comparision though. Trove loses hands down.

I'm guessing realistically, someone playing with voxels doesn't really care how muchlongerit takes to make something (which someone above claims that's a negative).. there isn't any endgame to rush to. Most creative people want to take their time and render whatever it is as detailed as possible so that when they invite someone in, people go "Oh, how incredibly detailed". Sure you could slop some bricks together and make something easy because you can 'count them out', but you lose that extra creative ability even if it's 'more tedious'.

Also, Landmark allows you to take those highly detailed things you've made and import them as blueprints into EQNext I believe, so there's a reason it's more detailed than Trove. Trove doesn't allow you to import what you made to a real mmo so basically, it's just Legos.

Someone needs to put Trion out of its mercy, this is just getting pathetic now

Jackdaddio_sl said:

If I want a world full of other people and destructible environments and combat that have a cutting edge to them, I'd just go to EQN

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Yeah, those fucking idiots. How dare they share some design characteristics with an unreleased game, which may never go gold, from a franchise who has pretty much written the book on failing to deliver on all sequel and expansion promises?

I'd be surprised is this genre of game took off the way that SEO and apparently Trion are expecting that it might.

Minecraft strikes me more like a deviantart platform for a different type. Some really great stuff there and all, but I don't see how you turn this into a corporate moneymaker.

I mean you'll be able to make some money just offering the service. There will be enough sustained interest for that. But not the kind of money that these guys hope/expect/want to make. It's just not there.

It's stupid to not expect them to look like a small brother copying big brother and compared as so.

SOE just went through the media blitz with pc gamer articles to the live stream and so on for a mmo with the EQ name that has folks building their own shit.

Trion then follows suit at the same time in a much smaller way at the same time ( and obviously far behind).

It just comes off as pathetic , because when the little brother tries to copy and say " hey I can do it look at me too" it's cute , when a business does it it shows desperation.

Which is sad because I like Hartsman.

Seems like a waste tbh but I'm also assuming there isn't a whole lot of money behind it so maybe they weighted the risk vrs reward and saw it pretty low.

My thing with Trion is I was hoping they would take on bigger or more niche ideas. After rift they seem to have taking a huge step back. This was an unanticipated project so hopefully they have something else cooking. Id like to see them take a crack at a more traditonal old school mmo. Go after the slice of the pie nobody wants and own it.