Planet Calypso: To click or not to click? The veteran new player experience

Discussion in 'Planet Calypso' started by NotAdmin, Jan 2, 2019.

  1. NotAdmin

    NotAdmin Administrator

    Taken from PCF, where it's likely to be deleted.

    Original thread is/was here:

    http://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/f...ot-to-click-The-veteran-new-player-experience
     
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  2. Everything has been said twice...uh, I mean, to thousand times.

    Sums it up nicely.
     
  3. Tass

    Tass Administrator

    Can we drag the author over here and frontpage the thing?
     
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  4. Link sent. Thanks for using the PlanetCalypsoForum reputation system. :nana:
     
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  5. NotAdmin

    NotAdmin Administrator

    • Agree Agree x 1
  6. Tass

    Tass Administrator

    There's not much to add to the article. It's a very good overview and it's well-written. After reading it and agreeing to almost everyting I wouldn't have expected a rating as high as 3.5/10 :)

    The biggest fail of EU was probably the engine switch. Nobody asked for it and with the top engines you can do almost everything. This is AION, originally released in 2008 based on CryEngine 1 it was much better looking and more advanced than what EU delivered with CryEngine 2 a year later.


    Previously EU was using Gamebryo. The engine Obsidian has used to create the award-winning Fallout: New Vegas released in 2010:



    So it's not about the engine, it's about the use of the engine and what you make of it. VU 10 must have eaten so many resources and when finally released it was terrible and a huge setback from which EU never fully recovered.

    For me personally a huge setback was the planet partner program. Of course it added more content but almost all disjunct, lorebreaking and redundant, massively increasing clutter. Had the same resources just been used to add to and improve a consistent game world...

    Where I rather disagree is the avatar development. It's very slow, very static, all skills and levels are more or less just stats not affecting anything beyond marginally contributing to a couple of formulas for example defining speed of movement.

    Something I miss in the article is the multiplayer gameplay which actually should be a very important part in multiplayer online games. In this aspect EU is falling even further behind the state-of-the-art than in other areas. While visuals might feel 2010 the multiplayer capabilities rather feel like 2005. And probably the "guild" system hasn't seen an update since then. PVE co-op is absolutely terrible in EU, and that's still the best part to me...

    What EU probably was always lacking is a clear vision and creative director overseeing the whole process, the only point in time where there was hope for the better was the peak of First Planet Company ~2011, but that was short and it was limited to Calypso only. Over the years that lead to a total clutter of settings and storylines, disjunct partially overlapping partially redundant features, stuff that nobody ever would have asked for, and almost all of it implemeted half-baked below standards and then never updated according to the original plans. There we are, and future doesn't look brighter than ever anymore ;)
     
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  7. Last edited: Jan 2, 2019
  8. Tass

    Tass Administrator

    Yes, but as far as I understand it's a constantly updated project, just like CryEngine is, Bethesda might neglecting it a little bit and obviously adding multiplayer wasn't so easy. Possibly it's a general problem of Fallout 76 that it was a little bit rushed. Todd Howard has suggested it will also be used for The Elder Scrolls VI in a heavily modified version, so we probably got to wait and see that one, in 2023 or so :)
     
  9. I think if Entropia didn't make the move, they wouldn't be here today. Many of you in here would rather play the old game, but it's gone.
    The article nails a lot of what"s wrong with our crappy game. But it's still here. It cannot be said about a lot of fancy gfx mmo's that had a large, well payed dev team.
     
  10. Jamira

    Jamira Samurai Girl

    The interesting part is, that Boring_player could sum it up in this precise way after 100 hrs of gameplay only. Thumbs up!
    Wouldn't be helpful. Many of us are old school Entropians. Boring_player wasn't player when we started. He doesn't know our love for the old Project Entropia, the old community and all the good experiances. He clearly explained that he won't stay longer in EU because the minuses prevail the pluses for him. What else should he add? As McC wrote: Good summary but all has said before a thousand times.
     
  11. Tass

    Tass Administrator

    I believe we have the best EU ever. But I also think the gameplay is further behind standards than ever. That's a problem because new players compare it to the standards they know. And the question is whether the current status could have been reached more efficiently, for example by continuously developing the engine and game in parallel instead of switching to a completely different engine requiring a remake of 90% of the game. Other games have limited lifecycles, they go from pre-oder hype to AAA pricing to budget to free-to-play to open-source to oblivion. But EU cannot have a limited lifecycle due to RCE and player investments, it only works with the prospect that what's spend today can be worth more tomorrow. So it's got to be designed to run forever. So regular updates to state-of-the-art look & feel and gameplay have to be part of the design but obviously that's not the case. And there are examples where it works, EVE Online is always looking good, Black Desert got a major graphics update in 2018, 4 years after release, also in 2018 Guild Wars got a graphics update, 13 years after release. And people are still playing Ultima Online, and even more people are still playing Tibia, it's turning 22 next Monday :)
     
  12. Wistrel

    Wistrel Kick Ass Elf

    I know most here still pine after Gamebryo but I still think moving to cryengine was a good move for Entropia. Where they went wrong though was that it feels like they were not tough enough on themselves about keeping up to date with the engine development or fixing problems. It felt like they moved and then sorta lost their way as regards development and priorities. What they did with CE2 regarding adaption was pretty impressive given it was a level based engine but the mistake was stopping development. So much stuff languished in "that'll do land" and instead we got BATSIM and COMPETS and DERPCOIN and not even any frikkin statues for years.

    OK we got missions which could be considered at best "a good START" to a mission/instance system but again, seems to have developed at a snail's pace. Another was the creature control system. Developed to "hey this is a fun thing" level but never to the point that it could be used to control a mech or something (which is what Cyrene wanted). Space is another, so much effort into creating cool spaceships but never continued work into how to improve/finish/fix bugs.
     
  13. the mistake wasn't to stop development, it was HOW they developed their things. i think they did it in a way that crippled the codebase and prevented easy future cryengine upgrades ... and over the years we kinda learned how their development feels for us players, quality and success wise.
     
  14. NotAdmin

    NotAdmin Administrator

    I think the jump to CryEngine was the wrong choice. CryEngine (or Unreal for that matter) were primarily designed for FPS games. Yes, CryEngine looks beautiful, but that's in the hands of capable people. MindArk should have known that their skills were not up to the task, even if they'd been attempting to do an FPS. At the time, other engines were also options. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure any of them would have worked well for EU at that time and place. I think that looking back, it'd have made more sense to stick to Gamebryo a bit longer, while waiting to see what'd happen in engine land.

    The conversion was piss poor. They basically pissed on everyone who owned real estate by completely fucking up all geography that determined value of said property prior to the switch. Complete systems in which people had spent lots and lots of money were disabled for undetermined amounts of time.

    What systems were re-released were done so in a seemingly hurried way. It doesn't matter that it's incomplete, just release it and we'll fix it at some undetermined point in time. The same applies to many of the newer systems like Achievements and missions. It's the same old, same old. The only thing changing is the text. No new ways of doing missions have been released since its inception. It's all "go here", "loot that", or "kill thousands of mobs, if that's what it takes to shut you up for a few months".

    Regarding the missions, I still think NEVERDIE actually did a terrific job with Hunt the Thing. It showed a new way of looking at and putting the use the mission system. Too bad nobody at MindArk HQ paid much attention to it.

    As for the the partner program, I'm in agreement with Tass. It's a bunch of unrelated storylines, and planet partners that end up getting run down by MindArk. Cyrene has been talking of mechs since they started. They are waiting for a suitable system to be designed. It's been 10 years. I'm not sure Kris or Ed have faith it'll ever happen, and while Cyrene is still being actively maintained, and developed, it's a fraction of what it once was, and a long fucking stretch from what it could have been, had Creative Kingdom partnered with a competent partner.


    My biggest gripes with EU always have been and will be that it's too expensive for what it offers (a boring repetitive clickfest of a casino), and while MindArk sure loves boasting about their RCE, the amount of bugs costing players money not being resolved is fucking shocking, and should be sufficient reason for them to be laughed out of any office they'd walk into hoping to be even considered for a banking license.

    And then there's the negligence. The aforementioned bugs. The hurriedly released systems. The planet partners. The statues. The whole fucking game, while MA went off chasing a mobile game, followed by an ICO, with a remote virtual meeting app in-between. At least it seems they got the message, and might now once again focus on actually developing EU, but fuck, whoever on management just sat there and let this multi-year shitshow happen, their heads should roll for this. I highly doubt they'll have the decency to realise they are dumb fucking assgoblins by themselves, and unfortunately Jan manages to secure a majority share, and David's head is so far up Jan's ass he can smell what Jan is about to eat.

    But if I were a MindArk shareholder, I'd be very unhappy with a bunch of morons like those two ensuring that EU was completely stagnant while other games were developed, or massively improved upon in the same period. Standing still means you're actively losing the race, and in the gaming world, there's plenty of cars being driven by far more competent drivers.
     
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  15. Tass

    Tass Administrator

    From a press release today:


    JAGEX CELEBRATES 18 YEARS OF RUNESCAPE AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH

    Friday 4th January 2019 (11am GMT) – Cambridge, UK - Jagex has revealed today that on its 18th birthday the RuneScape franchise has reached an all-time high, soaring above the previous 2008 peak, following expansion on to mobile. The successful launch of Old School RuneScape on mobile and early testing of RuneScape mobile has boosted subscriber levels to well above the 1 million mark. During its strongest year to date, Jagex achieved a number of significant milestones:
    • More than 5million installs of Old School RuneScape on iOS and Android since launch
    • The RuneScape franchise achieved the highest ever paid membership total in its history over the Christmas period, surpassing previous record set in 2008
    • Cumulative lifetime revenue for the RuneScape franchise passed $1billion
    • Monthly active users more than doubled over the year with big gains in the last quarter
    • Highest ever attendance for annual player convention RuneFest
    • More than 100 new hires were added to the Jagex team
    ...
     
  16. Wistrel

    Wistrel Kick Ass Elf

    "multi-year shitshow" :D will have to remember that one XD

    Yeh ND did do a great job with Hunt the thing generally, and the mission system was used in the most imaginative way seen to date. Even then, I felt what he did was just the start of what could have been done with a longer multibranching mission. I remember a bit with a machine that was a cool demo of how to use it well.

    Anyhow, while I like the go here or go find something thing it often feels like whoever is in charge of them has zero creativity (most of the time - there are moments of "spark" for certain I'll grant you).

    What MA should do is:

    1. Give a toss
    2. Take the story mission at PA
    3. Add Neverdie's level of interactivity/interaction from HTT
    4. add some go here, take this to NPC X
    5. add a LITTLE shoot that
    6. add a LITTLE craft this
    7. add a LITTLE mine this
    8. add the need to travel somewhere that can only be reached with a vehicle (e.g top of an un climbable mountain)
    9. add a go here, that is somewhere difficult to get to (because to the terrain) with vehicles disabled
    10. add some stuff like the puzzles in the enigma keys
    11. add some code breaking stuff like they did for that TV event years ago
    12. add some stuff relating to the diaries ;)

    or...

    13. hire me to do it for them :D
     
  17. Remember the old feffoid traders?

    Bring them back. But this time, put them in the middle of an area where: vehicles do not work, it's very misty so you don't see much, radar is off, teleport chips do not work. the area around the safe middle is filled with atrox marauders, araneatrox stalkers.

    the feffoid traders do not trade with ped, but with feffoid trader tokens. You can find them in all creatures, from punies to the highest levels of mobs. The problem is not finding enough tokens, but getting to the middle without dieing. The mobs that protect the feffoid traders should do around 1000 damage, so even the highest ubers in this game will have trouble surviving. The idea is not that you can survive them, the idea is that you die if you meet a mob. So to get to the middle will take all your evasive manouvers that you can possible think of.

    Tactics like going in with 30 people to protect the one who may finally reach the middle.
    4 feffoid traders will have an unlimited supply of lower midlevel (level 0 - level 20) unlimited weaponry. one with melee, one with ranged, one with mindforce and one with mining equipment/blueprints. You can trade with each of them one time for one item, then they become unresponsive.
     
  18. Is the Hunt the Thing place still visitable?

    I think I still have some stuff in storage there (if it is takeoutable)?
     
  19. narfi

    narfi Lost

    yeah its all still there,I was hunting things just last week
     
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