Vehicle speeds don't make sense

Agree. I'm sure the speeds have been chosen with consideration to game performance, so the numbers themselves don't' mean too much, though they do sound pretty pathetic... I'd like to see the valk go at least twice as fast and the sleipnir and quad go even faster on planet. Maybe that's for a later VU when vehicles have variable speed and joystick support.

 

I guess a little bit more speed in a quad should be not affect the game performances so much........... at least in space
AHHHHHH forget!!!!!, MA don t what you fly in space with quad but just using expensive/exclusive toys for few ones. I m sorry, my fault.
dc

 

There is another factor beside speed. You have Engine power. The Valkyrie Mk2 has more engine power than the Valkyrie Mk1. So when you climb a hill the Valkyrie Mk2 won't slow down like the Valkyrie Mk1.

 

Hi,

Guess it's like Neil said:

Very fast movement puts a lot of stress onto both servers and clients, and the MA developers still seem to be far from even beginning to learn about "CE2 optimization", obviously they're still struggling with getting full control of the engine at all. (Animations, hand positioning etc. etc.)

I linked the Crysis demo (from Nvidia, 1.8 GB) somewhere else recently, it's really crazy how far the EU game experience still is from the possibilities this engine offers. MA really doesn't seem to care about optimization, not even about using all of the engines possibilities, it looks pretty much like they'd be happy & to go on as soon as it works "in a sufficient way at all".

Besides, really fast movement seems to be very difficult to realize in MMO's, even Blizzard, IMHO still the most pedantic optimizers at all, are limiting their max. speed (airborne) to 392% of basic ground speed in WoW. And even they disable these high speeds in areas where there'd may be larger number of players, e.g. battle grounds. No flying there, to my last knowledge.

Space might make a difference, since it is a different "instance", and there'd be rarely the possibility of hundreds of "moving objects" on screen at the same time. But - maybe MA is dreaming of "epic space battles", featuring exactly this? Somebody has said "Eve"?

To get this done they cannot allow too speedy movement even in space, this would be a lag fest at it's finest. Learning from Eve, and using a different UI model (inside ship only, a complete different view) to overcome this might solve this problem, but hey - doesn't it work as it is? Why spent money to develop a better version? How much would this cost?

I agree to the OP, the vehicle speeds in EU are rather pathetic. They might be ways more spread, for instance these newbie crafts should have 2-3x pedestrian speed, carts should be noticeable faster, further noticeable topped by the flying objects.

And space should be even more different and fast-paced. This should be an at least acceptable in-game flight simulator, offering good game play, challenge and fun. Not this deadly boring waiting, waiting, waiting more that we have now. Usually the pirates are asleep of boredom, should they be not it's a simple calculation: number of ships and crew, value of skills, who has more, wins.

Boring. But this is a main problem of EU: It's all about money/ time spent, high numbers reached, personal player skill doesn't count at all. Any educated chimp could control a high skilled and top geared avatar, and enjoy the build in "I win". But this is a general problem and off topic as such.

Have a good time!

 

hmm true, but to use them at caly the speeds are quite ok, otherwise with your quad you would always pass the places where you wanted to go :D

 

Hi,

I'd not mind. Imagine:

• Below a certain hight your Quad behaves like a VTOL, or Chopper, maybe a bit faster. In the atmosphere. 50 - 100 km/h. Thick air is slowing you down.
• Going up higher, in the area just below space, you'd have better speed. 200 - 300 km/h. Thin air. For sure, not this precise, but quite amazing.

How it would work:

3 different hight areas:

• "Close to ground" - same as we have now, for all vehicle types.
• "high atmosphere" - VTOLs and choppers would be the same (they have no additional gear for this), Quads would be substantially faster there
• "Space" - Quads would be a lot faster, VTOLs would be quite faster, Choppers are not made for space.

Using "high atmosphere" with your Quad to travel from Troy to Oshiri (right across the Calypso server) might be quite fast, but you'd end in a destination not exactly matching Oshiri TP. We have such already with TP chips.

Just an idea.

Have fun!

 

Vehicle Speeds wrong? What about the mob speeds? As I was driving my Exploration Hoverpod today I noted some mobs keeping up with me at 38mph. Some fast mobs out there. :)

 

To be honest, I don't think it has to do with the capabilities of their servers. CryEngine, like any other engine, works with an update loop. In this loop you move x units per frame (+ some calculations to make this consistent). So, whether you move 1m or 100m per frame, it's still one calculation.
Rather, I think it's just to limit us.

EU can use a lot of optimizations. Just look at EVE, they handle 10.000's of players in one logical server (a lot of physical servers though). That's while EU can only handle a few thousand at most. (I'd say 2000).

And in the end, optimizations have little to do with the engine. Optimizations can most of the time only be done in the code that the programmers write and the 3D models the 3D artists make.

 

But isn't one of the major problems here currently with MA is that they are learning cry2 day to day?

And if this is one of the issues why can't MA open up to their Planet Partners? Right now I'm guessing they are getting a lot of support from them to help fix the bugs as the Planet Partners summit bugs and then showing MA how to fix them. If MA would open the development up to all partners then we may see a lot of good changes and more, enchantments.

MA needs to open up the known bugs to all Planet Partners, then they will have the full development backing of all planets.

 

You're correct, the quad is very slow in atmosphere. I did some testing a while back and using the coordinates as a distance guide, determinate that quads only run at 62 km/h in atmosphere. But the others aren't exactly right either.

Quad: 1.383 min → 62 km/h
Arctic chopper: 1.50 min → 57.2 km/h
Sleipnir Mk1: 1.533 min → 56 km/h
Gungnir: 1.717 min → 50 km/h

See the full post at:

http://arkadiaforum.com/showthread.php?2605-Quad-speed-in-atmosphere&highlight=quad+speed

I really like the idea of the quad and sleipnir being able to fly fast at high altitude.

 

It's hard to tell. When you've learned to program in one language (I believe their old engine was C++) you only need to learn the syntax and some language specific advanced things of another language (CE is LUA and C++). So the only thing that's left to learn is the API. But that's mainly knowing what different things do. There isn't much to learn in the area of programming. Also, as far as I know, all programming is done by MA, the planet partners just deliver content (2D and 3D stuff, levels, ...).

So, they're either not very good programmers. Or they're limiting what they're putting out.

 

A bit off topic but MA's idea of 1au is crazy. 1au is the distance from the sun to earth 149 million km or 93 million miles (give or take a bit). So 5 au on approach to Calypso would be about the same as getting close to earth somewhere around Jupiter.

MA speeds and astronomical units are dynamic

 

Actually you forgot the fastest vehicles.​

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Space craft Privateer Vega Class : 2100 km/h​

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​

 

Hi,

Thx, but I think either I formulated poorly again, or you misunderstood, or both ;-))
For sure the CE2 should be able to handle it, and buying servers that can handle it shouldn't be this problem anymore today.
I should have said it more precisely, IMHO the bottleneck is the client, or, in this case, the stress that even a small number of really fast moving objects would impose to it.

In same cases we can even today "feel" a VTOL coming into Field of View, game play becomes more "laggy" then. Even if it comes from behind. Not to mention the lag if many "moving player objects" are in the FoV, we all know this. Interestingly, monsters don't seem to have an influx at all - obviously they are treated different ...

Judging from my (little) experiences with Crysis as well as with other comparable games this seems to be an innate problem that hasn't been solved until today. As soon as many not-AI objects are moving in a smaller area the fps is going down - more bandwidth used to update with the server, more stress on CPU and GPU to calculate/ display it? Dunno, I'm not a game developer.

But I've seen how other companies have done it - fiddling with textures until they finally had the smallest possible impact, adjusting sight details and resolution depending of speed, creating limits that would avoid difficult situations - for instance, when I last played WoW, you could fly high above some big cities, but as soon as you'd come too close, so that the many, many players there would have to be drawn, you'd get booted from your flying mount - a no-fly zone ;-) Simple, but effective!

Yes, how poorly optimized EU is can clearly be seen by comparing it to Crysis. Animations, movement, responsibility, to name a few. Thus I wrote:
"it's really crazy how far the EU game experience still is from the possibilities this engine offers. MA really doesn't seem to care about optimization, not even about using all of the engines possibilities, it looks pretty much like they'd be happy & to go on as soon as it works 'in a sufficient way at all'."

Dunno, it's beyond my knowledge if the CE2 would be able to handle 10K's of players at all - guess this wasn't necessarily the main goal when developing. To my knowledge no such implementation exists to this day.

Fully agree.
Guess we can see Crysis as the top-optimized example of the use of CE2 (after all it's the "demo" for the engine selling efforts), and EU as a quite quick & dirty implementation of this engine. And as the only implementation at all that made it into a lasting game, the Cry products aside. M.O.B. seems rather dead, Blue Mars crashed, anything else beyond Vigilance (that isn't really a game, even if should still exist)?

Seems MA has bought a vastly hyped game engine that nobody but them finally uses anymore. Curious when they'll have to switch again (to CE3 obviously), and what this will mean to us.

Disclaimer: I'm no game developer. Nevertheless, I'm in the developing area myself and think to be able to judge a bit how things are done. Obviously, I lack any deeper insight into game development and engine details. Thus quite a lot of what I write here might be pure nonsense. Please be so kind then to correct me, I'm always eager to learn ;-)

Have a good time!

 

Yeh they don't make sense but then again nor does looting hair gel ;) I understand that its nice if they did but ah well. I'd say though the vtol doesn' have to go faster than the cars since it isn't staying up via wing lift. Same with Quad wings. They don't seem to fly in an aerodynamic manner more some sorta antigrav.

 

Hi,

tbh I'm quite sure that the introduction of vehicles was one of the worst decisions ever, just slightly beyond the choosing of CE2, as the meanwhile only active licensee as it seems.

We did very well before vehicles came, we had MF-Teleporting, and it perfectly suited the lore. We had the chips, and we always had the goal to finally get the next best one.

Vehicles, especially free nOOb vehicles, rob those nOObs receiving it by a most important experience, the "discovery phase". Once it was a challenge, today it's just a sissy job to collect your TP's.
And MF-Teleport chips are useless now, as well as the sweat used to fuel it. What an improvement ...

I worked, beneath my daily grind, for quite some time to get my TP's on Eudoria only. It was checking Wikis, planning routes, swimming for hours sometimes - but when I really arrived alive, I had a feeling of proudness. I had done it, and not used the "T" shortcut.

This is what binds you to a game. Not getting stuffed with easy going vehicles as soon as you leave the nOOb area.

Vehicles robbed the nOObs of an important part of the experience, made the former MF-TP chips quite useless, and didn't more then to make look the game more easy.

This is not good. IMHO.

But ppl wanted it so badly! Right? Well, ppl want a lot of stuff. Wait for long enough, drop suitable keywords, and they'll want guillotines to chop their own necks ...

As soon as EU will introduce real houses, ppl will start to cry for multi-story houses. Both wouldn't be more but an extended storage, but, hell, ppl want so badly ...

And they'll find something to cry for as soon as multi-story houses have arrived, elevators maybe?


IMHO it's good to hear to the participants. But it's not good to fulfill any other wish, in the hope it might attract more ppl.

At least, such new features should be made then in a way that they'd be able to compete with current implementations. And regarding MA's vehicles, sorry, but they can't compete even with late 80's vehicle games ...


Have a good time!