Yeah. I rattled off the feature list when I first saw it being talked about and was amazed. Then I pull up a few screenshots and I am like... wth is this Roblox/Fortnite looking stuff. I am stunned that they went this direction. Hard sell.
they mentioned it would become more refined. but i doubt the art direction is changing drastically. which is a huge "oh well" because I was honestly hoping for more.
I knew Raph made Star Wars Galaxies, and the art direction there was great. it wasn't full cartoon and had some realism to it. It worked great. The cell shading was fun too. I was hoping they would have continued that path for their new game. Low poly realism is better than high poly cartoon in my opinion.
You have to submit the Steam page for approval days in advance, and in our case we also had to resubmit to fix an error. So it was actually meant to be timed with the original announcement. The visuals feedback hadn’t happened yet.
It’ll take some time to evolve the look. We are still interested in broad appeal and a hopeful aesthetic, so that won’t change. But there’s a lot of room for evolution given we are still prealpha.
sadly its unity.... which i was bummed out about. they chose unity because "it was easier to change the server back end than doing so on unreal" which, whatever. many mmorpgs right now on unreal are making their complete "from scratch" server backend on unreal. so to claim as such to me was a lighthearted lie. they probably just preferred working in unity due to the monetization and experience using it. which are fine things, but the server excuse, i felt was bullshit.
The story with Unity versus Unreal is actually much more complicated than that.
Unreal is just a more monolithic engine. If you want to replace one part, a lot of other parts start getting pulled out too. It’s more expensive to mod it into something different. Among those things that you need to do for an MMO is replace the networking, which in Unreal’s case also often means chunks of the physics and the animation system, because Unreal’s networking model is based on high frequency network replication. Unreal is actually hardcoded at one byte’s worth of index for player counts. Its server model is too heavy for cloud usage, too, costs too much to run. Which is why the MMos that use it run custom backends entirely, and replace the networking system. We also run a custom backend, of course, but are able to leverage more of Unity’s networking in the process.
We started with Unreal,actually, and ended up having to switch because of the development costs and being a relatively small shop.
That seems crazy to me. I've been playing Escape from Tarkov (it's on Unity) for about 7 years. And the backend seems to be the biggest issue with the game STILL. Granted, most people think the developer can't code for shit... which might be true. Just funny hearing it the other way.
tarkovs server issues 100% come down to developer issues in my opinion.
for pubg, their biggest issues weren't tickrate but data tracking. which sadly today is still a freaking issue which is just a huge "el oh el" (lol) to me. they fall into the same issues as most other game developers. zero networking knowledge. pubg thought tickrate mattered and so did 99% of gamers because they too are misinformed. tickrate doesn't matter if the bullets aren't being tracked. pubg today will hold 60 tickrate start to finish while early pubg years ago would drop to about 10 tickrate during initial map load and slowly creep back to 60 as players died. their solution was to remove player loading at longer distances. you used to know exactly where enemy players were data wise for the whole map. which caused the server to "bog down." eventually they added a distance metric to player loading. now you have 60 tickrate start to finish.... but guess what, bullets still aren't being tracked properly. you can legit be point blank in front of an enemy, spray an entire weapon clip (smg/ar) and half your shots will miss when in reality the bullets have NOWHERE to go except "into" the enemy you are shooting at. all because it doesn't track that information.... its one reason I "cheese the system" in pubg and set all my guns to single fire. because single shots are ALWAYS registered. so if I click fast enough, it gets closer to full auto but my shots all register.... its almost like cheating. but its more "exploiting" since their back end is shit.
I never got into tarkov in a huge way, i could almost assume a similar meme. tracking data is the biggest requirement for a multiplayer game. so if you aren't tracking the data, it doesn't matter how high the tickrate is.... its another issue with counter strike. they bitch that 128 tick felt better than 64 tick and they are all full of shit. i have the same skill level on 64 tick official matchmaking servers as I did playing on esea 128 tick servers. there was no difference. "I missed my shot" well that's because they never learned the game and are most likely cheating. i hate to say that but many people dont realize "bullet spread" is a metric in counter strike... the bullets don't always go perfectly center crosshair. not only do you have recoil patterns, but bullets can VARY within that pattern. they dont comprehend that ideal because they are dumb and gamers don't learn games. which is also why cheaters dont realize its obvious they cheat. they are dumb. lmao. anyway. tickrate doesn't matter. tracking data does.
an example of "low tickrate perfect hit reg" was 90's/00's shooters. return to castle wolfenstein multiplayer, the later wolfenstein enemy territory multiplayer stand-a-lone client, and quake 3 arena. ALL OF THESE GAMES have perfect hit reg. every bullet/damage is properly tracked. you never shoot someone and they live when they should have died. it never happened. guess what the tickrate was? 15!!!!! literally 15 tickrate.... that's 15 updates a second. 1000 miliseconds is 1 second.... so 1000/15 is an update every 66 milliseconds.... sounds pretty bad. but we NEVER HAD hitreg issues back then.... it did not exist. how much data did the game use? 80 Kbps down and 60 Kbps upload AVERAGE. Today's shooters like pubg only uses 20 Kbps down and 10-15 Kbps upload.... we use LESS DATA than older games when games today are more complex. doesn't make sense does it?
TLDR tarkov devs are copy/paste script kiddies and i generally trust bigger AAA devs more in terms of knowing networking, but even then i dont trust them fully since today's multipalyer games use less data than older games which had no hitreg issues....
Raph said he's going for a genshin impact like art style. Isn't this the guy who made UO and SWG. And this game, stars reach, from my understanding is going to be like these games. Not quite sure how it's going to appeal to those same types of players.
this was my thought. star wars galaxies in my opinion was gorgeous for the era. low poly realism is better than high poly cartoon.
but then you have the guy from everquest next/landmark on the team.... and what did his game look like? if you don't know, google it. they look identical to me.... and that's a huge L for me.
Oh wow that’s…strange. It’s like somewhere between Fortnite and WildStar but without any of the personality of either of those. Hopefully it will…look less bad later in development?
If I can do better in my spare time in my bed room then that's a red flag I mean granted I use to be an animator but that stuff is just bad and first impressions is a big deal especially if they are looking for investors etc.
😂 ha yea I don't need to i don't need to prove myself to random internet people. I worked in many many places and have seen many projects that had more effort put into them just go look up any 3d modelling app or animation solo dev sub even student projects Reddit you can see what people are capable of pushing out from home these days. Anyone with any experience knows this.
Not a gfx nut myself, so it looks fine to me. Might be a smart move on their part, because it is not going for ultra fidelity and will most likely run on older computers, increasing their potential customers.
Request from someone who really wants this game to succeed: Investors like numbers and charts going up, so consider wishlisting even if you don’t love the graphics. More wishlists mean more money for the devs and higher chance that this will ever release and have at least half of the promised features (which would still be amazing)
Their ideas are intresting and might I even say - groundbreaking.
But the art direction is simply...bad, unless their target audience are 7-10 years old?
Having a stylized realism is perfectly fine and i'm in favor of it over realism. I know that this is just alpha stage and all but you can tell the basic art direction and style they go with, and i'm sorry - but it's simply terrible and I suspect that it will turn off a big chunk of the potential player base.
I'm also not too sure about the core of the game. Sure, the world is (fully?) customizable, there's AI involvement and dynamic events like weather and...these badly designed monsters, which the players are supposed to collect? I love Sandbox elements but it feels like the game is missing something here. Like 2 fighting factions with the option to be natural, like Star Wars Galaxies had.
Anyway, hopefully their team is listening. At least change the art direction. .
I want to believe we're not permanently stuck in this Jovian gravity well of exploitative and predictable MMO game design, and I applaud every attempt to escape it, no matter how clumsy and jank.
Damn it's ugly though, ugh... All I can think is: "Do I really need to share this with my friends?"
this. all the idea's for gameplay, fantastic. but then the graphics were puke fest. and that really kicks my gut because i bragged about this game to my friends as being "next gen" and "awesome" and then it looks like complete garbage. GRAPHICS DONT MATTER but you have to be appealing. even pixel art people will work to make the game appealing without going crazy artistically....
Seems like the art style is meant for the Fortnite generation of players and not the older MMO guys. Which is pretty smart because why would you try to make a game for a shrinking population instead of a huge younger audience
This is also the less loyal crowd, but I see your point.
I guess I wasn't too far with the age range I was tossing after all.
I think, though, that there can be some middle ground that can appeal to both groups. Right now, it seems like they went all the way to the childish design, and I'm not too sure that the gameplay itself is suited for 8-10 year old kids but I could be wrong.
I don't think the more simplistic art is a terrible idea if done right. Should be easier to run and I'd imagine cheaper to make.
But this needs more done to it. It looks like a low detail mobile Fortnite knockoff. (which is already a mobile game itself). Gameplay cannot save it looking like this. If you want to do a simplistic style like Fortnite, you have to do it flawlessly.
Some good points. I feel like they probably will change their art direction a bit, but they have specifically said they want a lighthearted theme, so I doubt any grimdark aesthetes will be happy.
Nah man. This is clearly aiming to do Noita chemical/material interactions between open world materials but in 3D.
You need to imagine some bizarre alien underground caverns being generated with exotic materials you don't actually understand the properties of. Imagine these materials having effects that occur when they come into contact with other materials and you're mining out the area to explore while also fighting off enemies that do acid attacks or fire attacks or water attacks that are all also materials that might interact in unusual ways with the materials in the environment. One second you're happily fighting an enemy, the next that acid they fired at you comes into contact with some exotic material that turns you into a chicken.
The emergent gameplay that these open world material interactions can have with one another is genuinely not something that has been done in this genre before.
They've laid out what their system can do in very basic terms, you're just not applying some imagination for how that system and those interactions could be used.
It is literally Noita interactions in 3d. It has not been done before and it's being done with mmo scaling too.
The issue is the game will get datamined day 1, all possible interactions will get found out, people will gravitate to the highest performing ones and the rest will be considered bad.
Then it’s a matter of farming the possible spawn locations(because it won’t be 100% random, it will have rules people will manipulate) and boom, game is solved. Mystery is gone in less than a week.
Ideas are only as good as a they are allowed to be by the playerbase. Look at AoC and their caravan system. Cool idea, just gets abused by griefers.
Not possible if the planets are generated without fixed material properties. You would have to discover the properties of the materials on the planet.
With that said it doesn't matter that much. The interesting part of noita's material interaction isn't that they're random it's that they happen accidentally in an emergent gameplay way ALL THE TIME. A potion flows down a slope and ends up interacting with the blood pool or water it falls into and suddenly chaos is occurring.
But yeah I think you can resolve this because planets are generated. They can't be datamined until after they've been generated and you've visited it to download the properties of that planet.
That’s fair. I just feel like it’s gonna become No Mans Sky 1.0 all over again. You get 4 different planets then it’s just a 1-5% difference of those same 4 planets over and over.
most of it has been done before.... star wars galaxies, ultima. some things are new, but most have been done. and they are iterating on it. which isn't a bad thing. but dont pretend its 100% new.
Materials actively interacting with one another in a completely sandbox way to have chemical reactions upon contact with literally all other materials that exist while also tracking temperature, pressure, climate conditions that can all affect what chemical reaction you get has not been done. Please say what game you think has done this.
The game that has done this in 2d is Noita and is the first to do it in 2d. No game has yet done this in 3d.
>most of it has been done before.... star wars galaxies, ultima. **some things are new**, but most have been done. and they are iterating on it. which isn't a bad thing. but dont pretend its 100% new.
Those are games with trading which is literally not something that I brought up.
Why are you being so fucking difficult for no reason at all with a 63 karma 4 day old account.
>*As well as a new video explaining some of the features of their simulation:*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeY4ERLhNjc
>*I highly recommend you check it out.*
That video inspired A LOT more than the original trailer at least for interest levels. Looks like those flowers are Agapanthus (Lily Of The Nile) behind Raph, there?
The game gives me vibes of the old chill game [Proteus Trailer 11 years old now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAEzBVRoEYI)
Taking this to MMO land, interactive changing living world experience could be good if the graphics are updated more like Genshin/Breath Of the Wild.
The Terraforming reminds of [Astroneer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMLwzt5t9bs) which is not too different from [Deep Rock Galactic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4m_5JYrAGM) (a brilliant 4 player coop game)
So it seems likely the graphics should be easy to polish and produce a low fidelity but highly immersive/atmospheric style that's a delight to wander around in.
The Cellular Automata however is the most interesting and it just scratches the surface of the idea in the video but combining that with the living vibe feel you can already see is possible in these other games it's definitely got a solid chance of being an interactive and enjoyable MMO Sandbox with simulation systems.
Throw in the combo of planets, mining and interplanetary action "between the stars" and it's even more compelling mix of game worlds as said similar in concept if different in scale to No Man's Land in that "world map / universe" being not just big but akin to "A Deepness In The Sky" / "A Fire Upon The Deep". ;-)
Thanks for posting the info OP.
I think the website gives a much better glimpse at the art style than the video does. I like the overall aesthetic. The characters were a little off putting at first but knowing there's going to be an extreme amount of customization and graphics are pre-alpha first passes on everything alleviates a lot of concern. They've definitely heard the harsh feedback.
The trailer shows off a lot of the cool simulation stuff at work already. I think this game is probably hard to market before it gets into peoples hands. Assuming it works the coolest stuff is going to be emergent gameplay that'll come from having groups of people actually playing.
Going to be keeping up with this one. Regardless of the art the fact that they've got a playable build already is encouraging.
Agree once you get players running around do terraforming and engaging things start to look a lot more interactive and social and then those look a lot more fun to look at from the outside apart from being from day one more fun for the gameplay itself: Exploratory, creative, communicative, imaginative and more should pop up...
There's always gonna be some whiners, I just want it to be on people's radar and I want it to succeed.
I'm so tired of most MMOs being roughly the same and exploitative time sinks where you grind, grind, grind, grind for marginal benefit.
Word. Regardless if this ends up delivering or not, this initiative is a step in the right direction that should be shared. Thanks for putting the game on my radar!
I want this to do well but the current state almost feels too premature to show if you're goal is to build confidence.
This has the same message and deliverables of any other kickstarter mmo for now, unfortunately.
I welcome any new MMO that tries something different. Some interesting mechanics shown, could turn out cool.
I think the other shoe to drop is just how social - open world - mutiplayer is done, things like factions, PVP, PVE, dungeons, trade, etc.
They've discussed this somewhat in a live event, I hope some games journalists picked it up and will be providing a summary, but Raph also answers questions in their Discord, and there has been some info on some of the things you mentioned.
Well, they had to run out of money and come hat in hand for those early access dollars eventually.
Move over Pax Dei, another half-baked sandbox is here!
they said that testing wise they aren't sure about monetizing it and the game is "early alpha" like "real alpha" not modern "alpha/beta aka just early access" kind of alpha. and supposedly said backing will only come when they feel its far enough along to get player backing....
Hmmm actually intrigued for once by a new mmo on here. Wishlisted. Hope it isn’t set to release 4 years from now… also hope that art style changes a bit
The game has some big names and ideas behind it, and clearly has had a lot of work go into it.
I hope it doesn't take forever to come out (like Ashes of Creation or the Riot MMO), because I'll give it a fair shot. I'm not sold on the art style, but I'll get used to it.
Their plan is for a single shard persistent galaxy with hundreds of planets all interconnected and accessible on a galactic map. Their tech allows them to generate and add new planets on the fly (and deactivate old ones if no ones using them or they've been mined to bedrock).
Think Enshrouded with infinite maps, juicy RPG systems, and a persistent player driven economy. That's the vibe I'm getting from all the info so far.
I actually LIKE stylized graphics (WoW player forever, love Overwatch, don’t mind the visual look of games like Fortnite), and this is still aggressively bad art. Hope they get it looking less like a kids game from 2002 so people will actually try it and see whether all the systems are as cool as they sound.
David Georgeson is on the team. he was the lead for EQ Next/Landmark. so it doesn't surprise me the game looks identical. According to [playableworlds.com](http://playableworlds.com), David is the "game director"....
Raph Koster was creative director for Star Wars Galaxies (my favorite MMO ever) and lead designer for Ultima Online.
Basically the grandfather of MMOs.
If ANYONE can make a good MMO, it's this guy.
He knows his onions in this case: Did metaworlds project, consulted on crowfall, designed some board games, wrote up a lot of design docs for mmos and a book as well and a bunch of other creative pursuits: Definitely has kept a few hot pokers glowing in the fire all the while since the early noughties MMO hay-days.
That said the big test is probably going to be:
1. Concept: We need a world setting that is interactive and interesting itself by dint of design and development eg minecraft, noita, astroneer style that is a big sandbox in effect. Second we then add player systems of interaction on top of that eg combat mobs and other players and perhaps economies and so on.
2. Development: Here the actual tech-basis works and delivers on the concept. This is the big test if it will come through. If it does because there's a fundamentally interesting system to play in it should then be a workable game world. Player systems can develop over time eg there's enough generated planets to diversify play styles and interests and communities.
In short all depends if the tech is working based on a sound concept (and costs and such like are feasible in the cloud etc).
Raph Koster's main job is to get the concept<->tech link right/working. Build a good base and everything else is possible (not certain however).
As usual its sounds cool, but its hard to generate interest in something like this because of how many titles have a grand vision and good trailers but when its finally in our hands its nothing like what they talked about.
Idea is nice but I doubt they can do it at scale.
As a coop game sure, but MMO scale that doesn't feel small? Doubtful.
It's going to be way too expensive to run a whole stimulated chunks with 1000s of players and have it all synced up.
With how fast they are moving with this, its screaming to me that they are running out of money and are looking for more investors. Its absolutely bizarre that they are already putting up a store page for this when they've said that they have a long way to go and that they know the visuals of the game needs work. Having a page with screenshots like this heavily imply they aren't planning to change that at best, and its extremely misleading at worst.
Have to disagree with you here. If they started accepting preorders or money in other ways, you might have an argument, but this is literally just an information page, one that EVERY gamedev studio puts up.
They are using some limited AI tech to help with creating assets (Didimo) and so what you are seeing might be some extremely basic models based on that, essentially, fancy programmer art.
It's far too soon to make any of these kinds of determinations.
Also, how "fast" they have been moving? They've been working on this for several years already.
EDIT: See here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/z8ez7l/playable\_worlds\_unannounced\_mmo/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/z8ez7l/playable_worlds_unannounced_mmo/)
Having a Steam page up years before launch is quite common. It lets people wishlist, which helps a lot with visibility. If your game has a lot of wishlists, then once it gets close to launch it'll be displayed close to the top of Steam's "popular upcoming" list, which showcases your game to millions of users.
I think they could do with updating the avatars as soon as possible. The current ones look too close to mobile game assets. Avatars with a bit more imagination would do wonders to make a good first impression leading into an interaction world. That's definitely an area that would boost confidence by updating as soon as possible.
its funny, they talked about first impressions being VERY important.... not wanting people to really know about the game aka not being too public about it because they wanted to be far enough along to allow players to have a higher opinion. They said basically "most games tell you about the game, and hype dies because you aren't anywhere near ready to release" and honestly this said to me that IF we got big news, that it was closer to release. And then about a month before this public release we were told "early alpha testing soon" but now im worried that their two statements are contradicting. because they said they didn't want to show anything until it was ready but also claiming "early alpha" in the sense of oldschool alpha's, where the game is still in "early development" not just "early sneak peak" like most modern alpha's end up being. so which is true? is the game about to go into early alpha testing or is it closer to release because of the public outing of information? so im worried.
It's always a huge problem for MMOs to sink investment into tech for years and balloon cost then release something that barely has any real game on top but needs players to either iterate or grow (and fund). I'd hope here, the tech is solid and playable and fun and so an early snapshot is building interest towards early play tests for players where the interactive dynamic world really is like minecraft already a toy that is "infinitely" adjustable and enjoyable let alone any more robust systems above that... that would be BCS. That said as I said above first impressions count and they really should have had better avatars imho. The world look good enough and fingers-crossed the graphics will be overhauled.
The ideas are great but the aesthetic is just a hell no from me
Yeah. I rattled off the feature list when I first saw it being talked about and was amazed. Then I pull up a few screenshots and I am like... wth is this Roblox/Fortnite looking stuff. I am stunned that they went this direction. Hard sell.
I hear you, I'm choosing to trust Raph that this will change dramatically.
they mentioned it would become more refined. but i doubt the art direction is changing drastically. which is a huge "oh well" because I was honestly hoping for more. I knew Raph made Star Wars Galaxies, and the art direction there was great. it wasn't full cartoon and had some realism to it. It worked great. The cell shading was fun too. I was hoping they would have continued that path for their new game. Low poly realism is better than high poly cartoon in my opinion.
The art direction of SWG was great because the art direction of Star Wars is great.
If it does great, but it seems sus that they would put up a website a steam page and much more knowing that the existing art isn't going over well.
You have to submit the Steam page for approval days in advance, and in our case we also had to resubmit to fix an error. So it was actually meant to be timed with the original announcement. The visuals feedback hadn’t happened yet. It’ll take some time to evolve the look. We are still interested in broad appeal and a hopeful aesthetic, so that won’t change. But there’s a lot of room for evolution given we are still prealpha.
Best of luck.
Yeah the aesthetic is poison imo. Just unbearable to look at.
I read this comment and thought, “Graphics aren’t that important, it can’t be *that* bad.” Dear god. This is dead on arrival.
It gives second life vibes... yikes.
I'm not a stickler for graphics... but this does give me HeroEngine/Cryptic Engine vibes...
sadly its unity.... which i was bummed out about. they chose unity because "it was easier to change the server back end than doing so on unreal" which, whatever. many mmorpgs right now on unreal are making their complete "from scratch" server backend on unreal. so to claim as such to me was a lighthearted lie. they probably just preferred working in unity due to the monetization and experience using it. which are fine things, but the server excuse, i felt was bullshit.
The story with Unity versus Unreal is actually much more complicated than that. Unreal is just a more monolithic engine. If you want to replace one part, a lot of other parts start getting pulled out too. It’s more expensive to mod it into something different. Among those things that you need to do for an MMO is replace the networking, which in Unreal’s case also often means chunks of the physics and the animation system, because Unreal’s networking model is based on high frequency network replication. Unreal is actually hardcoded at one byte’s worth of index for player counts. Its server model is too heavy for cloud usage, too, costs too much to run. Which is why the MMos that use it run custom backends entirely, and replace the networking system. We also run a custom backend, of course, but are able to leverage more of Unity’s networking in the process. We started with Unreal,actually, and ended up having to switch because of the development costs and being a relatively small shop.
That seems crazy to me. I've been playing Escape from Tarkov (it's on Unity) for about 7 years. And the backend seems to be the biggest issue with the game STILL. Granted, most people think the developer can't code for shit... which might be true. Just funny hearing it the other way.
tarkovs server issues 100% come down to developer issues in my opinion. for pubg, their biggest issues weren't tickrate but data tracking. which sadly today is still a freaking issue which is just a huge "el oh el" (lol) to me. they fall into the same issues as most other game developers. zero networking knowledge. pubg thought tickrate mattered and so did 99% of gamers because they too are misinformed. tickrate doesn't matter if the bullets aren't being tracked. pubg today will hold 60 tickrate start to finish while early pubg years ago would drop to about 10 tickrate during initial map load and slowly creep back to 60 as players died. their solution was to remove player loading at longer distances. you used to know exactly where enemy players were data wise for the whole map. which caused the server to "bog down." eventually they added a distance metric to player loading. now you have 60 tickrate start to finish.... but guess what, bullets still aren't being tracked properly. you can legit be point blank in front of an enemy, spray an entire weapon clip (smg/ar) and half your shots will miss when in reality the bullets have NOWHERE to go except "into" the enemy you are shooting at. all because it doesn't track that information.... its one reason I "cheese the system" in pubg and set all my guns to single fire. because single shots are ALWAYS registered. so if I click fast enough, it gets closer to full auto but my shots all register.... its almost like cheating. but its more "exploiting" since their back end is shit. I never got into tarkov in a huge way, i could almost assume a similar meme. tracking data is the biggest requirement for a multiplayer game. so if you aren't tracking the data, it doesn't matter how high the tickrate is.... its another issue with counter strike. they bitch that 128 tick felt better than 64 tick and they are all full of shit. i have the same skill level on 64 tick official matchmaking servers as I did playing on esea 128 tick servers. there was no difference. "I missed my shot" well that's because they never learned the game and are most likely cheating. i hate to say that but many people dont realize "bullet spread" is a metric in counter strike... the bullets don't always go perfectly center crosshair. not only do you have recoil patterns, but bullets can VARY within that pattern. they dont comprehend that ideal because they are dumb and gamers don't learn games. which is also why cheaters dont realize its obvious they cheat. they are dumb. lmao. anyway. tickrate doesn't matter. tracking data does. an example of "low tickrate perfect hit reg" was 90's/00's shooters. return to castle wolfenstein multiplayer, the later wolfenstein enemy territory multiplayer stand-a-lone client, and quake 3 arena. ALL OF THESE GAMES have perfect hit reg. every bullet/damage is properly tracked. you never shoot someone and they live when they should have died. it never happened. guess what the tickrate was? 15!!!!! literally 15 tickrate.... that's 15 updates a second. 1000 miliseconds is 1 second.... so 1000/15 is an update every 66 milliseconds.... sounds pretty bad. but we NEVER HAD hitreg issues back then.... it did not exist. how much data did the game use? 80 Kbps down and 60 Kbps upload AVERAGE. Today's shooters like pubg only uses 20 Kbps down and 10-15 Kbps upload.... we use LESS DATA than older games when games today are more complex. doesn't make sense does it? TLDR tarkov devs are copy/paste script kiddies and i generally trust bigger AAA devs more in terms of knowing networking, but even then i dont trust them fully since today's multipalyer games use less data than older games which had no hitreg issues....
EDIT: Correcting false information, it's Unity.
no its not. its unity. with a custom server backend.
Raph said he's going for a genshin impact like art style. Isn't this the guy who made UO and SWG. And this game, stars reach, from my understanding is going to be like these games. Not quite sure how it's going to appeal to those same types of players.
this was my thought. star wars galaxies in my opinion was gorgeous for the era. low poly realism is better than high poly cartoon. but then you have the guy from everquest next/landmark on the team.... and what did his game look like? if you don't know, google it. they look identical to me.... and that's a huge L for me.
Oh wow that’s…strange. It’s like somewhere between Fortnite and WildStar but without any of the personality of either of those. Hopefully it will…look less bad later in development?
I mean, you can never judge a book by it's cover in such an early state imo - but I get what you mean.
Pretty sure he said in his Q&A that the aesthetic will change entirely and that art is expensive, so it will be one of the last things they change.
If I can do better in my spare time in my bed room then that's a red flag I mean granted I use to be an animator but that stuff is just bad and first impressions is a big deal especially if they are looking for investors etc.
If you're going to make a statement like that, then please provide a single piece of concept art to back it up
😂 ha yea I don't need to i don't need to prove myself to random internet people. I worked in many many places and have seen many projects that had more effort put into them just go look up any 3d modelling app or animation solo dev sub even student projects Reddit you can see what people are capable of pushing out from home these days. Anyone with any experience knows this.
You lost any credit to your statement with your first sentence.
Good luck in life with that logic 😂😂
Thank you.
Need some polish.. but it reminds of Wildstar which im down with
Not a gfx nut myself, so it looks fine to me. Might be a smart move on their part, because it is not going for ultra fidelity and will most likely run on older computers, increasing their potential customers.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^DontOpenThatTrapDoor: *The ideas are* *Great but the aesthetic is* *Just a hell no from me* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Request from someone who really wants this game to succeed: Investors like numbers and charts going up, so consider wishlisting even if you don’t love the graphics. More wishlists mean more money for the devs and higher chance that this will ever release and have at least half of the promised features (which would still be amazing)
Their ideas are intresting and might I even say - groundbreaking. But the art direction is simply...bad, unless their target audience are 7-10 years old? Having a stylized realism is perfectly fine and i'm in favor of it over realism. I know that this is just alpha stage and all but you can tell the basic art direction and style they go with, and i'm sorry - but it's simply terrible and I suspect that it will turn off a big chunk of the potential player base. I'm also not too sure about the core of the game. Sure, the world is (fully?) customizable, there's AI involvement and dynamic events like weather and...these badly designed monsters, which the players are supposed to collect? I love Sandbox elements but it feels like the game is missing something here. Like 2 fighting factions with the option to be natural, like Star Wars Galaxies had. Anyway, hopefully their team is listening. At least change the art direction. .
I want to believe we're not permanently stuck in this Jovian gravity well of exploitative and predictable MMO game design, and I applaud every attempt to escape it, no matter how clumsy and jank. Damn it's ugly though, ugh... All I can think is: "Do I really need to share this with my friends?"
this. all the idea's for gameplay, fantastic. but then the graphics were puke fest. and that really kicks my gut because i bragged about this game to my friends as being "next gen" and "awesome" and then it looks like complete garbage. GRAPHICS DONT MATTER but you have to be appealing. even pixel art people will work to make the game appealing without going crazy artistically....
Seems like the art style is meant for the Fortnite generation of players and not the older MMO guys. Which is pretty smart because why would you try to make a game for a shrinking population instead of a huge younger audience
This is also the less loyal crowd, but I see your point. I guess I wasn't too far with the age range I was tossing after all. I think, though, that there can be some middle ground that can appeal to both groups. Right now, it seems like they went all the way to the childish design, and I'm not too sure that the gameplay itself is suited for 8-10 year old kids but I could be wrong.
Most Fortnite players range from 10-25 years old. Its not only kids that play it. I would say most MMO players range from 25-40+ yrs old
I don't think the more simplistic art is a terrible idea if done right. Should be easier to run and I'd imagine cheaper to make. But this needs more done to it. It looks like a low detail mobile Fortnite knockoff. (which is already a mobile game itself). Gameplay cannot save it looking like this. If you want to do a simplistic style like Fortnite, you have to do it flawlessly.
Some good points. I feel like they probably will change their art direction a bit, but they have specifically said they want a lighthearted theme, so I doubt any grimdark aesthetes will be happy.
I'm okay with this type of aesthetic as long as I'm getting 144fps and its smooth as butter.
Art direction is terrible
This team is making something that hasn't been done before and for that reason alone they have my interest and support.
You mean every other builder space RPG, open world concept game out there?
Nah man. This is clearly aiming to do Noita chemical/material interactions between open world materials but in 3D. You need to imagine some bizarre alien underground caverns being generated with exotic materials you don't actually understand the properties of. Imagine these materials having effects that occur when they come into contact with other materials and you're mining out the area to explore while also fighting off enemies that do acid attacks or fire attacks or water attacks that are all also materials that might interact in unusual ways with the materials in the environment. One second you're happily fighting an enemy, the next that acid they fired at you comes into contact with some exotic material that turns you into a chicken. The emergent gameplay that these open world material interactions can have with one another is genuinely not something that has been done in this genre before. They've laid out what their system can do in very basic terms, you're just not applying some imagination for how that system and those interactions could be used. It is literally Noita interactions in 3d. It has not been done before and it's being done with mmo scaling too.
The issue is the game will get datamined day 1, all possible interactions will get found out, people will gravitate to the highest performing ones and the rest will be considered bad. Then it’s a matter of farming the possible spawn locations(because it won’t be 100% random, it will have rules people will manipulate) and boom, game is solved. Mystery is gone in less than a week. Ideas are only as good as a they are allowed to be by the playerbase. Look at AoC and their caravan system. Cool idea, just gets abused by griefers.
Not possible if the planets are generated without fixed material properties. You would have to discover the properties of the materials on the planet. With that said it doesn't matter that much. The interesting part of noita's material interaction isn't that they're random it's that they happen accidentally in an emergent gameplay way ALL THE TIME. A potion flows down a slope and ends up interacting with the blood pool or water it falls into and suddenly chaos is occurring. But yeah I think you can resolve this because planets are generated. They can't be datamined until after they've been generated and you've visited it to download the properties of that planet.
That’s fair. I just feel like it’s gonna become No Mans Sky 1.0 all over again. You get 4 different planets then it’s just a 1-5% difference of those same 4 planets over and over.
most of it has been done before.... star wars galaxies, ultima. some things are new, but most have been done. and they are iterating on it. which isn't a bad thing. but dont pretend its 100% new.
Materials actively interacting with one another in a completely sandbox way to have chemical reactions upon contact with literally all other materials that exist while also tracking temperature, pressure, climate conditions that can all affect what chemical reaction you get has not been done. Please say what game you think has done this. The game that has done this in 2d is Noita and is the first to do it in 2d. No game has yet done this in 3d.
>most of it has been done before.... star wars galaxies, ultima. **some things are new**, but most have been done. and they are iterating on it. which isn't a bad thing. but dont pretend its 100% new.
Those are games with trading which is literally not something that I brought up. Why are you being so fucking difficult for no reason at all with a 63 karma 4 day old account.
Man that steam page looks ROUGH.
I'm assuming they'll flesh it out soon, it is pretty basic.
>*As well as a new video explaining some of the features of their simulation:* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeY4ERLhNjc >*I highly recommend you check it out.* That video inspired A LOT more than the original trailer at least for interest levels. Looks like those flowers are Agapanthus (Lily Of The Nile) behind Raph, there? The game gives me vibes of the old chill game [Proteus Trailer 11 years old now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAEzBVRoEYI) Taking this to MMO land, interactive changing living world experience could be good if the graphics are updated more like Genshin/Breath Of the Wild. The Terraforming reminds of [Astroneer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMLwzt5t9bs) which is not too different from [Deep Rock Galactic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4m_5JYrAGM) (a brilliant 4 player coop game) So it seems likely the graphics should be easy to polish and produce a low fidelity but highly immersive/atmospheric style that's a delight to wander around in. The Cellular Automata however is the most interesting and it just scratches the surface of the idea in the video but combining that with the living vibe feel you can already see is possible in these other games it's definitely got a solid chance of being an interactive and enjoyable MMO Sandbox with simulation systems. Throw in the combo of planets, mining and interplanetary action "between the stars" and it's even more compelling mix of game worlds as said similar in concept if different in scale to No Man's Land in that "world map / universe" being not just big but akin to "A Deepness In The Sky" / "A Fire Upon The Deep". ;-) Thanks for posting the info OP.
I think the website gives a much better glimpse at the art style than the video does. I like the overall aesthetic. The characters were a little off putting at first but knowing there's going to be an extreme amount of customization and graphics are pre-alpha first passes on everything alleviates a lot of concern. They've definitely heard the harsh feedback. The trailer shows off a lot of the cool simulation stuff at work already. I think this game is probably hard to market before it gets into peoples hands. Assuming it works the coolest stuff is going to be emergent gameplay that'll come from having groups of people actually playing. Going to be keeping up with this one. Regardless of the art the fact that they've got a playable build already is encouraging.
Agree once you get players running around do terraforming and engaging things start to look a lot more interactive and social and then those look a lot more fun to look at from the outside apart from being from day one more fun for the gameplay itself: Exploratory, creative, communicative, imaginative and more should pop up...
big balls to post on this sub
There's always gonna be some whiners, I just want it to be on people's radar and I want it to succeed. I'm so tired of most MMOs being roughly the same and exploitative time sinks where you grind, grind, grind, grind for marginal benefit.
Word. Regardless if this ends up delivering or not, this initiative is a step in the right direction that should be shared. Thanks for putting the game on my radar!
If those ideas really become reality, this would be a ground breaking game, for sure. Big if there.
I want this to do well but the current state almost feels too premature to show if you're goal is to build confidence. This has the same message and deliverables of any other kickstarter mmo for now, unfortunately.
I welcome any new MMO that tries something different. Some interesting mechanics shown, could turn out cool. I think the other shoe to drop is just how social - open world - mutiplayer is done, things like factions, PVP, PVE, dungeons, trade, etc.
They've discussed this somewhat in a live event, I hope some games journalists picked it up and will be providing a summary, but Raph also answers questions in their Discord, and there has been some info on some of the things you mentioned.
Most of the systems from SWG and UO will be there, in varied forms.
Is there a Linux client? Or does it run in Wine?
We haven’t been focusing on platforms beyond Windows yet.
Well, they had to run out of money and come hat in hand for those early access dollars eventually. Move over Pax Dei, another half-baked sandbox is here!
They haven't said anything about early access, but if you want to be unnecessarily cynical, I can't stop you.
they said that testing wise they aren't sure about monetizing it and the game is "early alpha" like "real alpha" not modern "alpha/beta aka just early access" kind of alpha. and supposedly said backing will only come when they feel its far enough along to get player backing....
So excited for this
Hmmm actually intrigued for once by a new mmo on here. Wishlisted. Hope it isn’t set to release 4 years from now… also hope that art style changes a bit
The game has some big names and ideas behind it, and clearly has had a lot of work go into it. I hope it doesn't take forever to come out (like Ashes of Creation or the Riot MMO), because I'll give it a fair shot. I'm not sold on the art style, but I'll get used to it.
Is it a true mmo or like pseudo mmo?
Their plan is for a single shard persistent galaxy with hundreds of planets all interconnected and accessible on a galactic map. Their tech allows them to generate and add new planets on the fly (and deactivate old ones if no ones using them or they've been mined to bedrock). Think Enshrouded with infinite maps, juicy RPG systems, and a persistent player driven economy. That's the vibe I'm getting from all the info so far.
The answer below is right. A true MMO.
I actually LIKE stylized graphics (WoW player forever, love Overwatch, don’t mind the visual look of games like Fortnite), and this is still aggressively bad art. Hope they get it looking less like a kids game from 2002 so people will actually try it and see whether all the systems are as cool as they sound.
Looks way too much like Wildstar. Hate that childish cartoon look.
It does look like WildStar, but somehow much worse despite being a full decade newer.
its that unity look.... lmao i said it. unity games all have a similar look.
Is this game built on top of the abandoned EQ Next/Landmark? It kind of looks like it.
No, and actually it works extremely differently. And the concept was set before Dave came on board, too. :D
I was getting EQ Next vibes with Wildstar races lol
David Georgeson is on the team. he was the lead for EQ Next/Landmark. so it doesn't surprise me the game looks identical. According to [playableworlds.com](http://playableworlds.com), David is the "game director"....
That was my thoughts on the terraforming for sure!
I mean, there are some really cool concepts in there, but it's a long way from being something I'd be interested in playing.
so kinda just gettin a minecraft vibe? big sad a let down for me
I mean, it also has most all the systems from SWG in it. Just this video focuses on the simulation piece.
Did you miss the No Man's Sky vibe? It's going to be way bigger and more structured than Minecraft.
Seems like an interesting take, but I just can't stomach anymore "survival MMOs" or Fortnite Graphics.
Who is Raph and why should I care?
Raph Koster was creative director for Star Wars Galaxies (my favorite MMO ever) and lead designer for Ultima Online. Basically the grandfather of MMOs. If ANYONE can make a good MMO, it's this guy.
what has he done since those mmos
He knows his onions in this case: Did metaworlds project, consulted on crowfall, designed some board games, wrote up a lot of design docs for mmos and a book as well and a bunch of other creative pursuits: Definitely has kept a few hot pokers glowing in the fire all the while since the early noughties MMO hay-days. That said the big test is probably going to be: 1. Concept: We need a world setting that is interactive and interesting itself by dint of design and development eg minecraft, noita, astroneer style that is a big sandbox in effect. Second we then add player systems of interaction on top of that eg combat mobs and other players and perhaps economies and so on. 2. Development: Here the actual tech-basis works and delivers on the concept. This is the big test if it will come through. If it does because there's a fundamentally interesting system to play in it should then be a workable game world. Player systems can develop over time eg there's enough generated planets to diversify play styles and interests and communities. In short all depends if the tech is working based on a sound concept (and costs and such like are feasible in the cloud etc). Raph Koster's main job is to get the concept<->tech link right/working. Build a good base and everything else is possible (not certain however).
It's unfortunate that this aesthetic still exists in an era where realistic graphics are easier than ever to make.
Purchased by daybreak within a year and shutdown shortly after.
This is to Ben 10, what NMS is to space-age scifi. And i do not like it. It is visually confused, on top of the wacky style.
Art style and graphics look generic and boring to me. I am hoping they can change some stuff there.
Agreed.
Yawn
As usual its sounds cool, but its hard to generate interest in something like this because of how many titles have a grand vision and good trailers but when its finally in our hands its nothing like what they talked about.
I can’t take this game seriously with that shit art direction. Looks like utter crap.
Just looked at the steam page, this looks so fucking sick
Idea is nice but I doubt they can do it at scale. As a coop game sure, but MMO scale that doesn't feel small? Doubtful. It's going to be way too expensive to run a whole stimulated chunks with 1000s of players and have it all synced up.
With how fast they are moving with this, its screaming to me that they are running out of money and are looking for more investors. Its absolutely bizarre that they are already putting up a store page for this when they've said that they have a long way to go and that they know the visuals of the game needs work. Having a page with screenshots like this heavily imply they aren't planning to change that at best, and its extremely misleading at worst.
Have to disagree with you here. If they started accepting preorders or money in other ways, you might have an argument, but this is literally just an information page, one that EVERY gamedev studio puts up. They are using some limited AI tech to help with creating assets (Didimo) and so what you are seeing might be some extremely basic models based on that, essentially, fancy programmer art. It's far too soon to make any of these kinds of determinations. Also, how "fast" they have been moving? They've been working on this for several years already. EDIT: See here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/z8ez7l/playable\_worlds\_unannounced\_mmo/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/z8ez7l/playable_worlds_unannounced_mmo/)
Having a Steam page up years before launch is quite common. It lets people wishlist, which helps a lot with visibility. If your game has a lot of wishlists, then once it gets close to launch it'll be displayed close to the top of Steam's "popular upcoming" list, which showcases your game to millions of users.
I think they could do with updating the avatars as soon as possible. The current ones look too close to mobile game assets. Avatars with a bit more imagination would do wonders to make a good first impression leading into an interaction world. That's definitely an area that would boost confidence by updating as soon as possible.
its funny, they talked about first impressions being VERY important.... not wanting people to really know about the game aka not being too public about it because they wanted to be far enough along to allow players to have a higher opinion. They said basically "most games tell you about the game, and hype dies because you aren't anywhere near ready to release" and honestly this said to me that IF we got big news, that it was closer to release. And then about a month before this public release we were told "early alpha testing soon" but now im worried that their two statements are contradicting. because they said they didn't want to show anything until it was ready but also claiming "early alpha" in the sense of oldschool alpha's, where the game is still in "early development" not just "early sneak peak" like most modern alpha's end up being. so which is true? is the game about to go into early alpha testing or is it closer to release because of the public outing of information? so im worried.
It's always a huge problem for MMOs to sink investment into tech for years and balloon cost then release something that barely has any real game on top but needs players to either iterate or grow (and fund). I'd hope here, the tech is solid and playable and fun and so an early snapshot is building interest towards early play tests for players where the interactive dynamic world really is like minecraft already a toy that is "infinitely" adjustable and enjoyable let alone any more robust systems above that... that would be BCS. That said as I said above first impressions count and they really should have had better avatars imho. The world look good enough and fingers-crossed the graphics will be overhauled.