The Official Status Thread
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9/3 = 3 Half Life 3 Confirmed!
honestly at this point i've decided to consider HL3 like DUKE NUKEM FOREVER... that way i can't be disappointed.
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I've never got all the way through 2, or even started the episodes, so I'm really not that bothered. It's a fun meme to play with though
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2 is pretty good, worth the time.
the episodes... they're lacking something. i get why valve tried them, but they really feel like valve should have gone straight for HL3 and stopped dicking around.
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Status: debating whether to take up KSP as an outlet for my hypersimulationist tendencies. Also, still smarting about the 0-for-5 streak in Eve I put up this last weekend. Yeesh!
P.S. I'm still searching for a sandboxy high-fantasy MMO...or, "WHY IN THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS DID 93154810 MMO DEVELOPERS CLONE WORLD OF WARCRAFT?!?!?!?"
Filed under: WoW killed its own genre
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P.S. I'm still searching for a sandboxy high-fantasy MMO...or, "WHY IN THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS DID 93154810 MMO DEVELOPERS CLONE WORLD OF WARCRAFT?!?!?!?"
Because WOW is actually fun in a way most MMOs before weren't?
If you're looking for fantasy Eve Online, well... the original Ultima Online was pretty much that. And it sucked ass and nobody liked it except 6 people who really liked it. ... exactly like Eve Online!
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Because WOW is actually fun in a way most MMOs before weren't?
Still doesn't mean that cloning it 93154810 (pedantry preemption: that's not the real number of WoW clones out there, but the argument still holds) times makes the resulting spew of games any more fun -- it just wears the notion (of a MMO based around pregenerated themepark content) out faster.
Besides, I'd argue that EQ was the immediate precursor to WoW; I even had a copy of it way-back-when, but its installer barfed instead of installing.
well... the original Ultima Online was pretty much that
Unfortunately, AFAIK, UO is an extinct game (kind of like the dodo bird being an extinct species). I've had wonderings whether an RvR MMO like DAoC would accommodate me, but sadly, that game shuttered it's RP server a while back.Which leaves me at a crossroads -- should I try and deal with NWN1 for all the infelicities it has -- AIUI, its ruleset is based off an old D&D edition, which is its own can of worms as the race/class interlock (i.e. you can't make a dwarf wizard or a halfling cleric) didn't get removed until a much later edition of D&D? Or should I try to shoehorn my playstyle into a more traditional MMO (GW2 is the leader of the pack here, for at least it isn't a recurring expense!)?
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Where I work, you can only roll over one week.
Yowsa! I've never rolled over much more than that, and until this year, I used to be able to sell a few weeks back every year.
Depending on seniority and the type of employee you are (I think? intranet isn't totally helpful on this point) we can accrue a maximum of between 280 and 480 hours of leave.
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Still doesn't mean that cloning it 93154810 (pedantry preemption: that's not the real number of WoW clones out there, but the argument still holds) times makes the resulting spew of games any more fun -- it just wears the notion (of a MMO based around pregenerated themepark content) out faster.
Perhaps; but if you're investing a few million bucks into a MMO, it's probably a good idea to not write one that has zero chance of success.
Anybody who wants an Eve-like experience (a.k.a. assholes) is already playing Eve. There's no room in the market for another Eve. Not even a "fantasy Eve."
If you really want some asshole action, you should get into MOBAs. Those are chock-full of assholes.
Which leaves me at a crossroads -- should I try and deal with NWN1 for all the infelicities it has -- AIUI, its ruleset is based off an old D&D edition, which is its own can of worms as the race/class interlock (i.e. you can't make a dwarf wizard or a halfling cleric) didn't get removed until a much later edition of D&D? Or should I try to shoehorn my playstyle into a more traditional MMO (GW2 is the leader of the pack here, for at least it isn't a recurring expense!)?
You could just play Skyrim.
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Perhaps; but if you're investing a few million bucks into a MMO, it's probably a good idea to not write one that has zero chance of success.
...I wonder how much of that goes into building the game engine and world, and how much of that goes into creating all that themepark content?
Anybody who wants an Eve-like experience (a.k.a. assholes) is already playing Eve. There's no room in the market for another Eve. Not even a "fantasy Eve."
There's also a not-insignificant (as far as I can tell) people who like the idea of a MMO, but have become disgusted with the 93154810 clones of WoW out there, ditched the genre as a result, and would actually appreciate it if someone stepped outside that box, for once?If you really want some asshole action, you should get into MOBAs. Those are chock-full of assholes.
Those are the real arseholes (read: trash-talk cranked up to 11, with no way to avoid it other than not playing the game), not the pseudo-arseholes you make Eve players out to be (read: the trash-talking stays at a low simmer most of the time, and the community knows when trolling's trolling and doesn't take it too seriously).You could just play Skyrim.
Considering how much a pain in the arse I found Morrowind to be (although most of that was getting used to single-player-style save mechanics all over again), I'm not sure if that's a particularly wise idea, at least not yet -- or does Skyrim actually do something useful, instead of tying respawning to savepoints? (Which is about as annoying as losing four days of Hull Upgrades V to undocking in an underspec'ed clone -- only, in Eve, that was pretty easy to avoid.)Besides, if TESO was like a multiplayer version of its predecessors, I'd have jumped all over it. Except, FWIH, it isn't, much to my chagrin.
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Status: day 3 of job, doing actual work. Whee. The codebase ain't too bad.
Status: also this place still uses Windows 7, and it's really pissing me off not being able to clone my taskbar across all monitors. So there's one negative.
On Windows 8.
It's really pissing me off not having a compact start menu.AKA being forced on a desktop machine to use a menu designed for a tablet.
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There's also a not-insignificant (as far as I can tell) people who like the idea of a MMO, but have become disgusted with the 93154810 clones of WoW out there, ditched the genre as a result, and would actually appreciate it if someone stepped outside that box, for once?
But the market is there for WoW clones, in the same way that there are a lot of people complaining that CoD and its ilk are boring and not what they want but when something like Spec Ops: The Line comes out it sells an order of magnitude less.
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Besides, if TESO was like a multiplayer version of its predecessors, I'd have jumped all over it. Except, FWIH, it isn't, much to my chagrin.
Ah this again.
Look I covered all this in my series of posts during its beta and I don't even want to repeat myself, except that I feel obliged because I actually like ESO for what it is.
ESO is not an MMO ES game. It's an MMO flavored with ES races and lore. Even the NPCs act and behave differently. In ES games the NPCs are succinct. In ESO they give you as much dialog as one would writing a teenage drama. They also tend to act it out with melodrama, not seriously acting concerned when OMG dragon like in Skyrim. Rather they go for "The Daedra are attacking again, but my knee. Go fight yes?"
And oh, no radiant system. Which I didn't appreciate as much as when it was gone. No, all the NPCs pretty much just stand there, outside of the ones with the typical triangle path cycle. And they most certainly don't have schedules. Outside of the wandering merchants (who add much needed atmosphere).
So, ESO is a generic MMO, with action based mechanics rather than auto-attack. It's still targeted, but they hide that really well.
Now, if you really wanted an ES online team based game, you'd end up with something looking more like Diablo 3 in first person. Small team session based gameplay. There's absolutely NO way to develop an MMO elderscrolls in any context that makes sense. Unless we were all the NPCs and there was an NPC dragonborn running around doing the quests, and we handed out the quests.
Hmm.... that might just work as a gag game.
But anyway, yeah, never will be such a thing as an MMO ES game. Only possibilities are single player ES game, or small teams session based game like Diablo handles teaming.
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But the market is there for WoW clones, in the same way that there are a lot of people complaining that CoD and its ilk are boring and not what they want but when something like Spec Ops: The Line comes out it sells an order of magnitude less.
A lot of it is conditioned expectations -- people see a MMO or a modern-setting FPS and are conditioned to believe it's a WoW or a CoD clone, so games that break that mold have a higher hill to climb.ESO is not an MMO ES game. It's an MMO flavored with ES races and lore.
My point exactly.There's absolutely NO way to develop an MMO elderscrolls in any context that makes sense. Unless we were all the NPCs and there was an NPC dragonborn running around doing the quests, and we handed out the quests.
Hmm.... that might just work as a gag game.
But anyway, yeah, never will be such a thing as an MMO ES game.
I agree that the ES storyline formula puts too much emphasis on "you are the special one!" for it to be straight-up adopted by a MMO -- that's the one thing I'd be OK with giving up, anyway, though -- it's a really annoying quest-trope in MMOs and drives me nuts whenever it shows up.
Anyhow, the problem was that the hype was trying to camouflage the fact they were building an ES-skinned generic MMO, not that they built a ES-skinned generic MMO -- had they come out honestly and said that was what they were making, I wouldn't have complained. ;)
you'd end up with something looking more like Diablo 3 in first person. Small team session based gameplay.
Reminds me of NWN (1 and 2) for some reason....Anyone wish to give me coherent arguments for/against picking up a copy of either NWN, GW2, or both? Or suggest something that'd work for what I'm after?
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NWN
GW was infinitely more approachable once they included the "HERO" class NPCs. It basically gave you customizable NPCs and gave you access to their ability bars, and you could build them to a greater portion of your power, than the typical hirelings.
They allowed people to take on raids with two players instead of 8.
You could basically have a pocket healer and pocket tank and pocket minion master.
It solved the holy trinity problem.
Now, you still had more difficulty than a full raid team, but at least all of the content was more approachable.
If only more MMOs took that approach.
As for session based gameplay, both it and Diablo take the linear session that feels more like instanced dungeons, than a fully explorable sandbox.
But I truly believe that such a sandbox game is possible.
Matter of fact, there are multiplayer mods for Skyrim, and the only real hurdle is quest synching. If it was a built in mechanic, I'm sure it would be much easier to tackle.
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Status: Belgium ed up my iptables on my remote server last night causing my ssh session to drop. Come to find out somehow the hard drive is failing according to my service provider?
Welp time for them to reimage. Good thing I didn't have anything on there that mattered. Apparently it's fine for reads so I'll be able to copy stuff over.
I guess this is what you get when you're paying only $25/month for a dedicated server.
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Status: after working here a full week, I just now realized that the Seattle Monorail is actually a valid commute option for me, and (in theory at least) runs more often than the 'D' line bus. Hm.
Alas, they do not take Orca cards.
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clones of WoW out there, ditched the genre as a result, and would actually appreciate it if someone stepped outside that box, for once?
Penny Arcade, earlier this year, mentioned another MMO that got rid of a lot of the...memes, or whatever...associated with WoW, like cooldowns and whatnot. They seemed to like it and were playing it for a while. I don't remember the name of the thing, though.
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It's really pissing me off not having a compact start menu.
After XP the start menu sucked anyway.
I find that a combination of pinning the most frequently-used applications to the taskbar or desktop, coupled with a little bit of re-ordering the start screen, and it mostly works better for me than the menu did.
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Hmm.... that might just work as a gag game.
Maybe less well than you think, or for less time. WoW actually does that in one zone.
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There's a zone in WoW that has you act like a questgiver NPC?
Oh pray tell which? I don't remember it.
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There's a zone in WoW that has you act like a questgiver NPC?
IIRC Hillsbrad Foothills, but only as Horde. You have to sit on a horse and give a quest to three other NPCs: Dumass, who is an idiot, Johnny something or other, a haughty doofus with a mount that you can only get in-game by buying (IIRC for $25), and an Orc twink. It's kind of played for laughs, but later on you have to help all three of them, and the Orc's sub-plot is actually pretty cool.
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Current status: just came into a complete s***storm of a system that has no documentation or any thought-out design, so I don't support it, but everyone's asking me about it. I'm glad that I won't be here much longer.
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IIRC Hillsbrad Foothills, but only as Horde. You have to sit on a horse and give a quest to three other NPCs: Dumass, who is an idiot, Johnny something or other, a haughty doofus with a mount that you can only get in-game by buying (IIRC for $25), and an Orc twink. It's kind of played for laughs, but later on you have to help all three of them, and the Orc's sub-plot is actually pretty cool.
In ESO there's a quest that makes fun of the "respawn" nature of NPCs and dungeon bosses and such.
You enter a dungeon and discover a mage guild member who was seduced into "borrowing" a powerful book.
The offender tries to use the book to power a spell that manipulates time, only to be trapped in a loop.
On the floor is a note that says something to the effect of,
"We're trapped in a time loop. We have to keep experiencing the last x minutes over and over, where someone comes in and kills us all and takes the book".
When you go to return the book, the quest giver doesn't recognize you because he's been reset.
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Status: I finally found a Christmas song I like.
Let It Snow (Somewhere Else) - Joey & Rory
Joey & Rory - Let It Snow (Somewhere Else) Lyrics. We took a trip down to the islands, And we got a little carried away. We thought we'd unwind, and lost track of time, and we woke up on
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Ordered a gift. Arranged for in-store pickup.
Walking to the mall in the rain.
This is progress?
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HL3 like DUKE NUKEM FOREVER... that way i can't be disappointed.
Which will we see first: [i]Half Life 3[/i] or [i]Fallout 4[/i]?
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Which will we see first: Half Life 3 or Fallout 4?
there's a fallout 2 and 3?
dang i got some catching up to do in that franchise.
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Yeah, New Vegas was a subtitle, it comes after 3.
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As much as I want to buy X Plane 10 for $30 I think I need to wait for the summer sale to get a better graphics card.
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Ordered a gift. Arranged for in-store pickup.
Walking to the mall in the rain.
This is progress?
You would have had to walk in the rain to see if the store even had the gift.
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what? i'm now three games behind in that franchise?
daaaang.
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GW was infinitely more approachable once they included the "HERO" class NPCs. It basically gave you customizable NPCs and gave you access to their ability bars, and you could build them to a greater portion of your power, than the typical hirelings.
They allowed people to take on raids with two players instead of 8.
Not a bad idea, I suppose -- it means you don't have to worry as much about trying to scale content down to small groups, but...
You could basically have a pocket healer and pocket tank and pocket minion master.
It solved the holy trinity problem.
You're making the mistake of assuming those roles must be split up into individual specialists. Or are minion-mastering main tanks (do NOT tell a Rattlesnake pilot that "minion master" and "tank" must be mutually exclusive!), healers that eat boss-grade punishment for breakfast, and other such hybrids impossible in GW(2)?As for session based gameplay, both it and Diablo take the linear session that feels more like instanced dungeons, than a fully explorable sandbox.
I presume you're referring to NWN(2) here? If so, then that's really a non-issue as the game lets you BYOD anyway.The main reason I'm against themeparks is because I want to be able to create content, not just consume it.
Penny Arcade, earlier this year, mentioned another MMO that got rid of a lot of the...memes, or whatever...associated with WoW, like cooldowns and whatnot. They seemed to like it and were playing it for a while. I don't remember the name of the thing, though.
Do you mind being a $favorite_fruit and digging that up for me please? It might be worth looking into...
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I think it was Wildstar.
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I think it was Wildstar.
I followed that for a little while -- the graphics are annoyingly cartoonish (one of the other objections I also level against WoW: the male models are so bloody exaggerated in that game that I would basically have no choice but to go to the other gender if I want something that doesn't look hopeless!), and the setting is a bit odd (some of the black-and-white-morality tropes at play). The developers did make it sound promising mechanically, though, so I'll have to look at what people are saying about it now that it's come out.
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i'm now three games behind in that franchise?
[i]Fallout 2[/i] is a straight up sequel to the first one. [i]Fallout 3[/i] takes place in the same world as the first two (although in DC rather than West Coast), but gameplay is a lot closer to an FPS, while still keeping most of the RPG elements. (You have an option to play in third-person mode if you like, as I did, but it was clearly a mode that none of the developers cared about.)
[i]New Vegas[/i] is built on the [i]Fallout 3[/i] engine, but has a lot of involvement from the original dev team, and is much closer to the first two in style and location.
There were some rumours that 4 would take place in Chicago, but that's about all I heard about it...
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You would have had to walk in the rain to see if the store even had the gift.
Dude, harsh.
Actually, worked great. Asked somebody if that was the line to stand in, he got my name, sent me to the line and brought me my thing. In-out in five minutes, tops.
And my walking sure beat driving...
Christmas bwahahaha.....
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one of the other objections I also level against WoW: the male models are so bloody exaggerated in that game
Ugh. I know what you mean. Most of my characters are female because the male models are so horrible.
Except orcs and undead, although with WoD the models mostly look a lot better, just from the graphics bump.
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Status: Spent all morning tracking down a bug, turns out it's in the front-end code. Hm. Awkward situation for a new dev, I've barely even spoken to any of the front-end devs...
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Don't forget about Fallout Tactics (where my avatar comes from), which is a combat focused game that wasn't totally finished but still fun and used a new and decent engine that could've made a neat Fallout 3 if done by the original devs, and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, a game following in the footsteps of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, except with cornier voice acting, a pretty bad plot, and a massive difficulty spike at the 2/3rds point.
...
Actually, do forget about Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. I like it, but I'm just weird.
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Status: Spent all morning tracking down a bug, turns out it's in the front-end code. Hm. Awkward situation for a new dev, I've barely even spoken to any of the front-end devs...
Now you'll get to know them. They're sure to love you when you point out their bug!
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Exactly. And my boss is on vacation.
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A friend and I played through it. It's... A game? I guess?
It sure ain't no Dark Alliance, that was fun as shit.
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Fallout Tactics (where my avatar comes from
Is that the one which had furry Deathclaws, and thus Never Happened™?
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Exactly. And my boss is on vacation.
Even better.
Current status: I'm waiting for my boss to get out of meetings so that I can tell him that I'm getting out of the company.
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So I talked to a co-worker about the ticket, and he asked if I was sure and to demonstrate it-- and now I can't repro the bug at all. Woo.
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On the high level, the events of the game are canon according to Bethesda, but specifics, such as the hairy deathclaws, are not.
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So I talked to a co-worker about the ticket, and he asked if I was sure and to demonstrate it-- and now I can't repro the bug at all. Woo.
CLOSED_NOTABUG
