f13.net

The other thread mutated into some horrible freakish creature.


The Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7804564.stm

 

Insert hat-eating related witty comment and vague suggestion of hopeful...ness.

2015 will be an interesting year!

He can't quit elf boobies.

So Richard, what do you think about the state of TR since you've left?

(http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45334000/jpg/_45334918_richardgarriott.jpg)

... and the sad thing was that he didn't even say the stupidest things in that article. That honour went to Fatal1ty's "I've got new headphones! Buy my headphones!" schtick.

I fucking hate him.  What the fuck?  His last games were so pathetically easy they barely qualified as game.  I didn't finish fable because it was such a joke.  It was so easy he might as well have made an autopilot feature. 

This article is shit.  I'm very bad at editing my post but at least I don't work for the BBC.  The content and the editing is a huge turd.

But he's doing it for the other players. The ones who can't get rich playing video games.

And he does helpfully point out that you can use them for the power of good and not just smack talking. Civilisation advances via headphone technology.

Seriously Dick, just fucking quit. Go live in your stupid fucking castle.

So all those adventures he wanted go on that would make him leave the industry... were just in his head? :uhrr:

Barnett sounded good with the tape over his mouth.  He needs to keep it there.  Forever.  It's also funny since the entire time he's talking about this big games failing I think Warhammer, while he acts like it's the one game that isn't.

Maybe the rent is due?
 
His history since, what, Ultima VIII is what any investor is going to look at, since at this point unless he buys a company, he's starting don scratch. I don't know that throwing his name around is going to do much of anything.

Rest of the article was predictable. Oh look, even more people catching up to the world that changed in ways they're just realizing a few years in. Can't say I blame them though. When you've got your nose to the grindstone, it's hard to pay attention to anything else.

If he wants to design again, I'd love to hear him working as "just" a designer on a project; contribute what he knows, and learn about what he doesn't know.

That said, I would kill for a Diablo clone set in Britannia, oh damn yes. He shoulda bought back Ultima from EA, instead of spending his money on a space ticket.

Sigh.

Fatal1ty's headphones will make more money than this project.

You would think that would be the case but sadly things don't work like that in the NA MMORPG business. People who shouldn't be making games get opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to screw things up again.

Eh. Next game: financial failure. I just saved some poor investor millions.

(http://www.angelfire.com/ak4/ratman/gariottmech.jpg)

Good luck to him, I don't understand all the hate for the crazy guy.

You should die sometimes.

Have the BBC produced any really good articles about gaming? Ever? In fact, I can't think of a single article, news item or blog from the BBC that was well written, well researched and well edited.

Me neither, dude make Ultima 6 and 7 for fuck sake.  Could spend the rest of his career churning out Puzzle Quest knock offs and still be a legend.

Heh, yea, if wishes were horses and all that...

I still don't know that his name is going to sell anything. Yea, getting picked up as a <insert project role> at some other studio, happens all the time. But that's different from having to provide a list of business successes to get funding :-)

I'd pay to raid Exodus.

I wouldn't say "hate" in my case. Mostly just that Tabula Rasa was such a clusterfuck that I can't see the guy getting trusted with any serious development money anytime soon.

But then again, game development rarely makes sense. So he probably will.

Those were definitely some good times...15 years ago. A lot of former Ultima fans are frustrated with his latest work, and I liken it to Star Wars fans hating on Lucas' latest stuff. For some odd peculiar reason, Garriott seems unable to produce a hit these days. He's always got some interesting, and rather frank, things to say in his post project interviews (I really wouldn't call them post mortems), but it's more like he's making excuses.

I thought it would be really keeno neato for TR to come out and make everybody -- including all WoW subscribers -- to go "OMG Garriott's Back LONG LIVE TEH KING!" and raise the bar and up the ante and shoop the whoop or whatever. But it just didn't quite work out that way.

Maybe if he got off of his ass and contributed more to these projects than just being a figurehead.

So that's my question too: how much did he input on TR version 1? He created the language/Triskelion, and we sorta know how much input he had on TR version 2 (read: not much). But was the first version his swan song, or just something he happened to attach to when he started funding Destination Games?

Reason I'm wondering: has he been done since UO, or has he not really had full creative/production control over a game since and only suffered because he's been attached to failures?

Yea, I know what the easy answer is. But I'm curious anyway.

Jealousy.  I'm crazy, but people don't throw boatloads of money at me and I don't get to live in a castle.

There may be a little disdain for resting on one's laurels and people elevating him to god-like status.  Pretty sure it's mostly jealousy though.

F13 isn't about jealousy. It's more about utter disdain for people throwing money around on dinosaurs who have a track record barely better than Uwe Boll in the last decade.

Though, I'm fairly sure Uwe Boll hasn't wasted as much money as Garriot did on TR  :awesome_for_real:

Seriously though, he either needs to fund himself or disappear from gaming, forever. Now, if he funds himself, all the more power to him. If he doesn't, I think we should write our senators. Well, those of us in Texas at least.

It's the tiara.  I'm sure of it!

To be fair, I liked the rainbow-colored turd that was TR version 1 more than the current incarnation, but come on - this project was doomed from the start.

It was NCSoft wanting to make the robot jesus MMO, with a dream team of KMMO developers, and Richard on the Western front. The first incarnation they shitted out was at least so batshit crazy that it was interesting. When they pooped out the current version a year later, it was kind of a disappointment. They had to basically cut their losses and go back to scratch, trying to make something salvageable.

Richard, if given his own project and working on what he knows (Fantasy gaming), I'm sure could at least do something passable.

Question, can he himself do anything with the UO franchise?

He's the M. Night Shyamalan of videogames. In addition to that, he spends incomprehensible amounts of money on completely stupid shit that not even other raging supernerds would spend money on if they had it to spare. Enough with the fucking castles, the renfair villiage made out of toolsheds, the pointless trips to feel like an "adventurer" that a fucking 8 year old girls would be safe on. He spent what, $30,000,000 just so he can say he's the first second-generation astronaut? Sorry to break it to him, his dad was an astronaut. He was an ambulatory piece of cargo that they had to bring extra food for.

And seriously, much better games have been theorycrafted on this and previous boards than he's put out lately.

Only if he goes back to work for EA.

No.  No Diablo clones.  In fact I don't even want Diablo Fucking Three to play like Diablo.
TURN BASED OR FUCK OFF FOR ULTIMA PLEASE.

And especially given Ultima's track record when it comes to making an Ultima that plays like another game.

Ultima 8?  Shitty Landstalker clone.

Ultima 9?  Shitty Zelda Ocarina of Time clone.

Just give me games like Ultima 5 but with better graphics and an improved interface with automapping and quest notes.

(http://www.angelfire.com/ak4/ratman/bodysnatchers.jpg)

Come to think of it, has anybody made a turn-based RPG lately?

Have I told you you're a freak today?

Japan.

Goodwill wears off eventually.  Mike Shanahan got fired in Denver. Garriot hasn't put out anything good since Bill Clinton's first term.

If I wanted to spend quality time being jealous of wealth I'd skip the small fish and go straight to Buffett.  I'm pissed at the Garriott situation because he symbolizes everything wrong with the Big Name phenomenon.  It's just celebrity worship.  People don't understand what makes games good, and in their ignorance they cling to recognizable names, like Garriott has some secret special sauce that makes games good.  He doesn't.  He's made many shitty games and 8,000 great games have been made since the last time he made a good one, but he's a Big Name so people give a fuck what he does, when in fact they should not.

You have been quoted as saying NES RPGs of the period were better than computer ones.  Your opinion?  Not so valid.  Except in that its mildly amusing to argue with you.
(Beats arguing with the customers at work, which could like be bad for job security and all...)

I can also be found quoting that Dragon Warrior sucked. In fact, I don't and didn't like either. What's your point? Is there a problem I'm not pining for old archaic bullshit?

I'd like to see him get one more shot. Even all we got was a well-funded freedom of choice skills-based game that devolved into a false belief of roving bands of PKs, we'd at least get a modern home for the few nuts who think that was Panacea so we can get back to evolving in a way more actual people want.

The wiki entry on turn-based MMOs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn-based_MMORPG) really isn't that positive. But there are some places to start.

To ask the newb question: wasn't Garriott more of a figurehead on UO too? Raph has always been the one I've associated with the top-level design.

What makes me smack my forehead over Garriott's comments is that fantasy is overdone, especially in MMOs. For him to somehow associate the failure of TR to its setting (which is the association I'm drawing - love to see RG's comments on TR at this point) is completely missing the point. Which I don't put past RG, but I'm always optimistic that people learn from their mistakes (the first time, of course - everyone gets a chance to show they've learned; making the same mistake twice shows they haven't).

Eh, I find the whole MMO business awfully depressing. The gaming industry needs to shape up.

What a cast of cutting edge, in the trenches, detailed, managers they interviewed.


Let's recap quickly.

PETER MOLYNEUX: I haven't played Fable 2, but I know it was buggy.  And frankly, what else has he done in the new millenium?
PAUL BARNETT: epic fail as a human being
RICHARD GARRIOTT: epic fail as a designer -- I mean, go follow the Grateful Dead already.
WILL WRIGHT: epic fail as a gamer -- he could've fought to not have dumbed down Spore as much as people complain, and frankly, he's burnout.
JOHNATHAN 'Fatal1ty' WENDEL: epic fail for contraception

 :grin:

No, he does not deserve a dime. Sorry. He should take his place in the annals of history and be content with that. All he's done for nearly the last decade is shit on his legacy. Thinking he can change is dumb. Thinking he DESERVES a chance to Right Things in the current economic climate is goddamn clownshoes. I'd rather see the $80M he'd need to produce another game to go 80 independent studios making iphone games.

Well heck, with COMPLETE choice, I'd rather see almost anyone else BUT those entrenched or associated with current MMOs get the $80mil to make a new game. We need the sort of quality departure that only an outsider has a shot to bring. Wish I could win the lottery of something so we could run a contest here on who should get it. Really fun would be forcing a good developer not interested in MMOs to try anyway :-)

I think this is one of the main problems holding MMO's back. All the good developers that are interested in making good games don't want to touch an MMO, since the current design all the publishers want to see is basically the opposite of fun.

Sorry, but no.

MMOs are hard. Very hard. 99% of all games out there are closed narratives (i.e. have a definite beginning, middle and end) even if they allow for some flexibility in how the player gets there.

MMOs are (for the most part) expected to be open narratives (i.e. the player chooses indefinitely what happens to their character among multiple pathways) or closed narratives with nigh-infinite content (get to the end of one story, move on to a new beginning).

If I were a publisher with $80 million to spend, apart from WoW I wouldn't see much on the PC that really interested me. So I'd be looking at a single player title on multiple platforms as a better bet for a decent ROI. MMOs aren't yet multi-platform, so that makes them less attractive.

If I was doing a MMO, I'd be looking at the successful ones thus far and conclude that the basic diku mechanic is essential to a successful title. Then I wouldn't want that diku pace to be too fast to allow more content to be developed before a critical mass of players got to the max lvl. Then I'd think that good loot and raids also seem pretty popular...  :oh_i_see:

A good single player developer in no way, shape or form is likely to be a good MMO developer. I think this is what Bioware is going to find out the hard way. They've already said it is like developing several games in one and their most complex title to date: just wait til they actually let the players in.

Hmmm, if I were an $80M publisher, I'd be prepared to try something more risky (WoW seems to have captured the DIKU audience, other DIKU alternatives have crashed), but not prepared to actually trust anyone with the project (startup has no experience, and so far, (almost) all the experienced MMO developers seem to be retarded). So, no MMO from me.

This is why it'll take an outsider to change things. Or for the market expectations or demographics to change. Or more likely, all three.

The basic problem is not that these are written as open endless narratives. It's that they're very light quasi-RPGs with an ending the player determine, and the most successful ones have forced co-op multiplayer after a certain amount of time in the game.

UO and Eve are not so strictly linear. They are the essence of "massively multiplayer" in that they are diverse worlds with multiple ways of having a virtual life within. THAT is a hard game to make because it's so far outside the usual development thinking. You don't bang out a system like that.

WoW by comparison is a few million people across a few thousand servers playing small multiplayer experiences in a crapload of well managed content. This is why I disagree that Bioware is going to have a problem. Based on what they've said so far it seems they're making a game they've already made but just with a lot more content and eventually some co-op.

So that's why I say an outside.

Shit, if I had 80 mil to make games I would use 10 million to get old computer and videogame rights, then the other 70 to revamp and rerelease the games on XBLA, Wiiware, and iPod Touch/iPhone.

Probably make 50-70 revamps and more damned money that way. 

Massive multiplayer is not the loaded statement you seem to think it is. Having more then 10 players in any given area of the game is "massive" enough really. Also there is really no such thing as a linear mmorpg, since (with current popular design) there is no way for a developer to guarantee that players will follow A to B to C type gameplay. Developers can and often do provide incentives for players to do particular content in certain ways or order. But by and large, if I chose to ignore all the quest and missions a game may provide, my ability to progress doesn't literally stop and neither most important my ability to play the game suddenly stop.

EvE and UO are "open" in the sense that Linx is open source. You can add to the game things that previously wasn't in the game and interactions with other players are not strictly regulated to co-op and pk only in certain areas/instances. Beyond that as games UO and EvE was never really more "free" then any other mmorpg. Though the ruleset allows you to do things you normally don't do in most mmo's.

I have to disagree with UnSub. BioWare problem will be forgetting that people actually have to play their game. I don't think BioWare will simply have a problem because by the nature of designing an mmo they will have a problem. Yes there are bad single player games, but by and large the game industry expects good games to come out of developers. At least the gamers do. Mmo players by and large don't demand the mmo developers to make better games, and thus mmo developers don't make good games. All BioWare or any future developer has to do is spend 99% of their time making replay able content and 1% of their time developing repetitive content. That easily 200-300k subs, not WoW busting but turns a profit and can grow if the replay able content fun.

1. Replayable and Replayability are traditionally 1 word.
2. I can count on 1 hand the number of North American MMOs with 200-300k people. It's apparently NOT easy, >_<, (talking about 3D worldspaces that are actual games, not Second Life, etc. OR things like club penguin).

Making bad games attract 200-300k players is not easy. Out of all the mmo's in North America how many are actually good games? Even WoW, the undisputed king of mmo land is hardly a great game by gaming standards. Designing an mmo is hard but I don't think you blame bad game design because of that.

Why the hell wouldn't I? A bad MMOG is the result of bad game design.

True, but that's more because of the genre they entered.

When 64v64 FPS matches become commonplace, then the line will have blurred. In the meantime, "massive" to me is the old SB banes, any given Eve war, and old Planetside fights (unless they're still big?). It's not just the amount of people (100+), it's the contribution to permanence, whether the razing of a city, turnover of a system, or even the relatively temporary locking of an island. Every other genre has battles that end by some pre-condition and followed by an instance reset. MMO battles in "massive" games do not.

But again, this is why aside from WoW's sheer world size and amount of players, I don't consider it as "massive" as Eve or SB. Lots of people, sure, but all going about their own business by themselves or in small groups. Because that's how the game was designed to be enjoyed, and that's how the playerbase seems to want it.

On linearity: yes, developers can only only compel and then design gates around emergent behavior. But this is not so different from traditional RPGs. The extra layer of complexity is that ANY player in an area can interact with the same mob you are. But even there, that is why the more successful games of devolved the massiveness into compartmentalized game encounters.

UO and Eve (and pre-NGE SWG) are so very different from WoW and the other diku-inspired games. Mostly it is because the player interactions were/are much more important than the player/mob interactions. This transcends everything from character abilities to encounters to equipment to resources and all rolled up into very different types of player economies.

Incorrect. You see that with any game that launches and tank, or outright closes. You can have 300k players and it not be enough to keep the game going. That means you failed, and that only happened because players came, and then left. Most other genres need not worry about that.

Please define your terms. Replayable vs repetitive content? What's the difference?

Bioware is going to run into the "MMO players skip the story, want the phat loot, where's the next mish?" problem. In short: MMO players are the problem. Single player games have a different emphasis. So I think we agree on the issue, even if we've phrased it differently.

Repetitive content is any content you have to grind. A mob is an example of repetitive content because you have to fight said group of monsters multiple times in order to advance, get money, or items. Most of the activities players do to get from low level to max level is repetitive content besides quest (though the same quest type can appear over and over).

Then there is Replayable content which is parts of the game you can simple play again. This is usually associated with end game content and missions. In Guild Wars all missions were replayable except the very early mission. A mob can be considered replayable content if the mob presents a challenge to you and there is no hidden need to advance your character by killing this mob multiple times. There isn't a hard line between replayable content vs repetitive, some task you know your doing over and over again for loot/items and some task you simple do because it is offered. PvP is the prime example, one hand in some games PvP is just apart of the grind for levels or items, on another hand is PVP once advancement is over is replayable content that can keep a good segment of the player base happy indefinitely.

You are right, current mmo players desire to see advancement, but that is because most games save the replayable content till the end game while making you go through repetitive content. Once players play a game where advancement is completely a none factor (not just advertised to be) gamers will focus on the actual content of the game and see if it is fun or not. If BioWare is smart vertical advancement will end very quickly and 70% of the game will be "end game" by mmo standards. If BioWare does what WAR and AoC tried to do and say "well levels and shit don't matter cause my game is fun every level", people will burn through the 1-** content fast and find that there is significantly less things to do once the vertical advancement stops. If you focus on a story in mmo-land it'll be an very good idea to end the vertical advancement as soon as possible. Otherwise players will ignore the story.

schild I think we miss understood each other, bad game design of course = bad mmo. I was saying mmo design being hard != an excuse for bad game design.

Darn I think your simple describing player involvement not how big it is. I find that the larger the game scales the less the individual player has to contribute and the less massive the game feels since your actions have very little consequence. However that is not entirely true most of the time. I don't find EvE or UO pushing the limits on how I interact with the game. It just forces me to deal with other players instead of the environment in a non-co op way. Beyond that if the basic reason you play an mmo is to be online with a couple of buddies and see how much crap you can do in 2-3 hours? I haven't played an mmo that truly felt different to me in that regard. Which is sad because that's the fundamental level a game has to tap into in order to truly separate itself from the crowd.

I think by and large the mmo player base is too willing to play any old bullshit and thats pretty why Mythic and Funcom thought they could get away with making such crappy products. Same with Hellgate london and Tabula Rasa, even if there good games hidden under that mess, the mistakes they made were just too obvious.

I agree with you on Mythic and Funcom, but you need to remember these were old-school MMO developers. The genre went and changed under them while they were so deep into the of their swan songs that they didn't have time to pay attention to what else was going on (a common occurrence unfortunately).


I agree with the first part but not the second. But before I go into why: did you play either and if so what roles did you play in them?

been too long for me to remember UO with detail, the game never left that big of an impression on me and I didn't stick around for the first expansion. EvE I tried to get into but got bored after a while which is said since on paper it looked like my game.

Ok. The reason I ask is because I was suspecting either that answer or some variant of trying to play UO or Eve like one would EQ1 through WoW. As PvE experiences, both games are weak; however, because you can play that way, the impression is that these experiences are like the multitude of others.

The biggest difference in both is the element of actual choice among an array of options that span far beyond just variants on four different ways of fighting pre-programmed AI within pre-scripted guaranteed-outcome encounters. Each different path offered it's own unique game play, method of advancement and contribution to a larger server society and economy. You could be a Blacksmith in UO and just be a Blacksmith, from "level 0" to "level 100". You can spend all of your time making a huge business just hauling shit around space in Eve, as the skills necessary and the expertise you gain are very different from someone who flies tackling frigates. This also existed in early SWG to a degree, but that wasn't the game the players expected so didn't maintain enough of a business to prevent SOE from changing it outright.

Meanwhile, in WoW, like most other diku games, you can be a crafter as long as you bolt that onto some type of adventuring/hunting class. And for the most part you are going to be limited in your crafting until you achieve certain levels on your class.

That is the difference: mob genocide along a path of gear advancement (which merely contributes to your efficiency in doing so) vs a virtual society where that particular path is weak but complemented with completely different roles.

Well pretty much described a simulator, doesn't really excite my lust for general destruction and mayhem the way a game would. Not saying a EVE or UO were bad, they just weren't something I'm willing to pay for. Don't get me wrong I think WoW is trash, but the notion of a virtual society doesn't strike me as special. I think most mmo players prefer their society to be a small circle of RL friends you play with in game, friends you met in game, and guild/clan. Beyond that I generally prefer beating the crap out of something as intelligently as possible.

Sadly my sneaking suspension is that EVE and games like EVE can only truly attract a large market share if they are f2p. If you give the average gamer a choice between paying 15$ a month on a space sim vs 15$ a month on a mob genocide, people will pick mob genocide 200:1. But if said space sim was free then those 200 people who would rather do mob genocide would probably mess around with the space sim. Unfortunately I don't think a game like EVE can be supported by cash shop, unlike low quality mob genocide games, so the day when virtual society games take over the world isn't coming any time soon.

UO and Eve are only examples of what exists. To really do this type of game for the mass market, you'd need to bolt WoW's level of well-crafted PvE onto these types of systems.

And that's the underlying business problem. There's really just no reason for a big company to bother. If a buggy-but-beautiful trainwreck like AoC can have almost four times as many accounts as UO had at its peak, what possible reason is there to add a sim to it? Adding UO or Eve subscribers to WoW would barely eke out a 5% increase in playerbase against the MUCH greater (and different) degree of complexity required.

This doesn't mean it can't nor won't be done. I just don't see it coming from anyone working with the sort of budget needed to do it right. The last team that tried was SWG.

Ultima 9 was an Ocarina of Time clone? Schild, you need to Just Stop Talking when it comes to any RPG that isn't from Japan.

What?! Where did I say that? Did someone edit one of my posts!?

That was Jain Zar and I responded asking if I told him he was a freak that day.

Woops, you're right. I apologize.

Bad Jain Zar. I thought you were my kind of nerd when you ran into the mech thread and started humping it, but now I shall have to think again.

Well isn't it though?  Its a 3d action adventure with limited RPG elements.  Cept while OoT is a pretty damned good game, U9... isn't.

And I am sadly nobody's kind of nerd, or anything else.  I exist on my own little wierd, lonely plateau with the odd strand that connects me to whatever reality every one else seems to inhabit.  :(

I never played Ocarina cause I don't own the console, but yeah U9 was a disaster in graphic, gameplay and writing. There wasn't really much positives to be taken from the bug ridden piece of shit that concludes a saga. What a horrible way to end a series. After the disappointment of U 8, I get treated to this rapid click combat with jumping puzzle in a 3D world filed with characters devoid of any personality when they had done so back then with Ultima 7? I'm sorry, tech improves but design seems to go backwards to stone age = Fail.

Someone needs to preserve these for the future:

http://kotaku.com/5123159/where-bad-games-go-to-die-rip-tabula-rasa

I'm not sure we'll ever see that. You need some kind of dynamic map or world that expands and contracts as players join and leave. BF2 almost had it right, but they couldn't do it on the fly. You need to do it on the fly. You need to be able to start out a game with a small group of people and have the combat be fun and engaging. Then as others join it can ramp up to make it fun and engaging for everyone. I'm not sure what Planetside ever did, as I quit in beta before they added the grid system to it (where you had to fight on the front lines, you couldn't sneak around and capture a base behind enemy lines) which I didn't particularly like. They should have taken the approach with a tiny area that expanded as more people started playing. Maybe they did take that approach. I don't know.

I remember playing 32 player qwtf matches in 1997 and imagining amazing things will be when everyone is off modems and more data can be sent around. They could have more location based damage, destructable terrain, all kinds of cool things right on the horizon there in 1997. I just never really saw it. Ever. After qwtf, I spent most of my time playing what I thought was the best Q2 mod at the time - Rocket Arena. The maps had less people. Then CS came along, and every fps player on the entire damned internet was playing it. Yet the best CS was with 12 people or less. Now I still play TF2 off and on, and the best TF2 is 24 players. L4D? 8 players.

I tried raiding in WoW near release, and I couldn't stand being around 39 other random people who had to do everything right to accomplish some goal. It was then that I kind of realized that I'd never see the big 128 player FPS games working, cause you hit a point where with that many people you need solid goals. In order to reach those goals, you'll need people working together. That just seems impossible when you're talking about video games on the internet. Is it a coincidence that WoW is repeatedly lowering the number of people required to raid?

On the flip side, you have Eve, where their biggest technical problem is trying to breed mutant hamsters big enough to power the servers for 1500+ person battles, but also scales all the way down to a single individual raiding hostile territory or camping a low-sec gate for careless cargo ships.  Even if you set aside WW2O or Planetside, you've got a tradition going back to Air Warrior of 100+ person battles in combat sims.

It seems more to be the case that if you start from human-scale avatars and spaces, with the wide variety of intuitive options people expect from those settings, you can't get beyond 30-40 people before there's simply too much going on for meaningful battles.  We've got the wrong problem space, our desired solution (massive, meaningful battles that are still fun for the loser) simply isn't in it.

--Dave

I don't think there's a technical impediment to having battles in the thousands on each side as long as the combat code is well and efficiently coded.  There are technical impediments to quickly rendering 2,000 avatars on the screen at the same time, but that's a separate issue.  Just getting 2,000 entities moving and shooting at each other is computationally trivial, even on commodity hardware.  I forget what my point was going to be, but I think there's a big market for very large scale battles (Battlefield 1942 times 10 and up) but the limiting factors are the increasing demand for high-quality graphics and decreasing appetite for risk among developers.  I suspect an indie will profitably fill this gap in the next couple of years (although indies tend to be averse to client-server apps, because they don't have resources for maintaining servers).

In a 10000 man PVE battle, sure that can be fun. Cause who cares really, the NPC by sheer number can provide individual challenge, without showing what will realistically happen to you in such a battle (people don't die in 3 secs) while allowing a very low degree on team work to be needed. Massive battles, especially in the RPG settings are going to suck massive balls. One you die, fast, very, very, very, very, very fast. You will spend most of your time on rez timer. No mmorpg, no matter how crap tastic the balance is, doesn't allow anyone to survive massive amounts of focus fire, hell depending on how idiotic the aoe damage is, battles assuming you don't lag, will be very messy and very unsightly. Then there is the organization, again large battles to feel like something remotely special has to have some semblance of intelligent thought, beyond the focus fire assist trains. Ultimately that breaks apart at even 20 vs 20, let alone 2000 vs 2000. And yes there will be lag, huge god awful lag. Till someone feels it will be a good idea to instances large battles, the shear number of spell effects spammed at any given time will lag the hell out of not only you the player, but the server, causing big cranky crashes. There are no persistent worlds now or forever that will EVER allow 100 vs 100 to be played consistently. Let alone 1000 vs 1000, AoC couldn't even handle 20 vs 20... It just ain't happening and that's just the way it is.

There may be a FPS that will do it, but it will be something like 20 vs 20 / 20 vs 20/ 20 vs 20. With each bracket fighting each other in separate parts of the map over different objectives. I don't think any duck and cover fps can truly do a 100 man battle let alone a 100 vs 100 battle without the outcome being "10 different snipers just scored a head shot on you at the exactly the same time. The server has no idea how to handle it so that just means you die 10 times at your spawn" (looking at you WolfTeam...)

There are an enormous number of inaccuracies in your claims.

First, you're incredibly assumptive that MMO combat will always look like what MMO combat looks like now (AoE spells, the possibility of focused fire, rez timers as a mechanic, fast death as a necessary consequence, that something like a 'focus fire assist train' is even remotely intrinsic to multiplayer gaming, processor intensive 'spell effects', etc).

Second, the assumption that 'huge godawful lag' is a necessary consequence of large scale multiplayer combat is based on nothing.  And a 'shear number of spell effects' (I assume you mean the graphics) lagging the server would be an astounding programming feat, since graphics are rendered on the client.  If you mean the state transitions and damage from the spell effects, they're computationally trivial.  I can't promise that every developer can do trivial calculations without fucking it up and making it laggy, but a very large number can.

Not that there's any profound, world-stopping consequence to you being wrong about this.  It just means that you're not going to help develop such a game, but I expect you'll enjoy it when it does come out and you'll have completely forgotten about this comment.

I'm assuming this post was made while playing darkfall.

No, it's just means Darkfall's developers fall into the category of can't even perform trivial calculations without messing things up, along with a host of other problems.

I tried to say the same thing to him in the Darkfall thread, but your eloquence exceeds my own.

For every game with large scale pvp that's actually fun, there is a functioning bipedal mecha.

(should have used that first)

Eh?

You're an idiot who doesn't understand things don't exist in black and white.

Sorry to disappoint you, but two of my colleagues are quite liberal and don't believe in global warming.  They have doctorates in the hard sciences, by the way.  This has nothing to do with games.  Politics is it's own little domain.  I suggest not bringing things outside of it.  (I was going to qualify that, but no.  The nuances would be lost on you.  Don't bring Politics outside of it's forum.  And really, with your wit, you shouldn't be there in the first place.)

I was just posting a sterotype to prove a point. My dinosaur analogy can't be used twice you know.

-prepares for extended vacation-

I am carving a new statue in the F13 mausoleum, next to Darksign, Dash, and others in their royal line.  Why do all of my potential apprentices die so young?   :cry: 

 :cry: oh sweet sorrow...

hmm.

It's not like I wield the ban stick.  Even if I was right, it wasn't us bitching about it but a mod getting sick of Dash for him to get the boot.

So you're safe for now Tri.  You still have someone to make you look good in comparison.  Enjoy not being our puppy to kick around for a bit longer.

He's likely Dash anyhow. Sure acts like it.  Otherwise, we're just blessed to have 2 retards in less than a year cut from the same annoying-colored cloth.

Anyhow, back to Richard Garriot and his lack of any meaningful future in the industry.

I don't usually like to poke at our lovely nubbies but this guy acts like Dash uses uses tenses like HRose.  Gah!  I need tea and saltines!

He sounds superficially like Dash but she could at least put sentences together. It's possibly Dash on meth I suppose. Dash at Grunk's rehab clinic perhaps?

Given the litany of names Tri just listed, I propose a ban on ALL new usernames that start with a "D."  :why_so_serious:

They all begin with the letter D too.  Coincidence?

You just posted the same thing as Merusk.  The "D" purge shall begin shortly.  We apologize for the delay.

Did we already ban DLRiley?  He hasn't said anything in minutes.  Don't delete Draegan.  I think he's nice.

He's such a whammy.

Darniaq's always been a little suspicious, too

NOOOO!  I LOVE Darniaq!  And TripleDes, too.  I know it's 3 Ds but he's so lovely!  STOP DELETING ALL THE D PEOPLE!!!   :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods:

Yay for "B"!

That made me google for images of "D People" and the results were really boring.

LOOK WHAT YOU HAVE DONE! (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29765)

 :why_so_serious:

You are not a B, you are an M. 

Stop reaming all the Ds. Things can only get better (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl-ai9HuR60).

First they came for the Ds, then the Bs, then the Ms. Soon, nothing stood against them. If only I'd been part of the RST cartel...

Oh #@%!

 :ye_gods:

Does this mean I get to share a bunk with Grunk? I'm excited, I haven't had the chance to be in a Grunk thread yet.

Eat lead paint chips for about a decade and you will get close to the experience.

The phrase "Bunk with Grunk" is stuck in my head.  Poor Bunk.  I miss thejeni so much, you know.

Why are you not in irc?

"Der" is an article... AN ARTICLE !!!  :ye_gods:

I don't know why I'm not in it.  Maybe I'm scared.  Or maybe I just prefer to post about chat clients.  I think I'm just lazy.

And please don't anyone delete the Der Helm!

Hey!

I'm sorry, but you'll have to be purged to be safe.  Our system does not recognize foreign words.  Auf Weidersehen.

Garriott to give talk about being space cadet (http://www.massively.com/2009/01/13/richard-garriott-live-on-stage-one-night-only/)

So what.

$65 a ticket?

SIXTY FIVE?

Who the fuck?

Man, what an asshole.

Well he blew on his money on the flight so he needs to refill the coffers somehow :awesome_for_real:

For those who don't check Lum's blog: the fall of TR from an inside perspective. (http://www.brokentoys.org/2009/01/16/perspectives/) Check out Adam Martin's blog too (http://t-machine.org/index.php/2009/01/16/we-need-to-talk-about-tabula-rasa-when-will-we-talk-about-tabula-rasa/) - it started the ball rolling.

Part of me thinks that neither Lum nor Adam believes they'll be working at NCsoft again. :grin: Another part wants to know what Lum wrote about Imperator that almost got him fired. But they are really interesting views of how large organisations deal with a major product that might not be up to snuff.

EDIT: ... and the consequences of getting it so wrong with the project management.

This is long, but heartflet :grin:

tl;dr: large companies are their own sociology.

Anyone who's ever been a creative (or a producer on the creative side) at a large company has basically this template on hand. There are rarely actual good post mortems, even more rarely does the knowledge base of a team transfer to a new project (because most times the teams are split up by function), and lots of projects take on that air of inertia with the expectation that "someone else" (usually the management-facing person) is responsible for the decisions that'll make it all better. In reality of course that someone else is relying on someone else to make the decisions. And so on, until eventually the project itself is just an underperforming line item on an SVPs chart, allowed to continue because it's below their radar and hidden by larger numbers on more successful projects.

It's when those more successful projects are no longer successful, or at least no longer a distraction, that your project is under a microscope. And then when it is, most times it's not going to go well. And that is due to the inherent contradiction of being under the radar:

If you're not getting the face time with management, or your "someone else" is not selling the needs of the project, then you're not getting the resources needed to do the project justice. You're doing the job you can, borrowing the resources when you can, and hoping to have enough to show to someday get those resources.

But if your organization and project are going as described in paragraph one, you end up like Lum's project after the demise of expectations for TR: suddenly out in front with little to show for it. And worse, you're never allowed to talk about why that is the case:

• You can't complain about the resources you never got because that's telling the company leads that they don't know how to allocate resources.
• You can't complain that management never cared about your project because that's throwing "someone else" under the bus.
• You can't complain about your own incompetence (not saying Lum nor his team were, but I've seen the self-aware incompetence thing a lot) because you still want your paycheck.
  
• And you can't complain about unrealistic expectations because chances are high at one point you and your team have also drank the Kool Aid.

I've found this applies to game development, business development, and marketing. Being actually successful in a large company is more how you position yourself for the next project than how well you're doing on the current. And that's because how well the current project is going is generally based on a whole crapload of factors outside your control.

Large companies are replete with middle management trying to justify their existence and upper management expecting them to do something useful. The fun part is that you do need a middle management, but they're never actually empowered to do their job.

This is why large companies are generally more successful at buying a smaller company with a near-complete project/business model than internally generating one themselves.

Anyone who's worked in an office building knows that weird two-faced thing. I've worked projects that were doomed to failure, but still liked to take home a paycheck every week, so I was quite willing to give constructive negative feedback... to a point.

I think more projects need a position of "No Man". The person who runs around telling everyone that (and why) everything sucks and doesn't have to fear for his/her job.

HOLY SHIT! That's my dream job.

Companies have those already. They're just the "naysayers" and "not team players" who eventually get shuffled laterally until they quit  :awesome_for_real:

I thought these are heretics who are burnt at the stake...  :why_so_serious:

Here's another interview. (http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/exclusive-richard-garriott-talks-games-after-space/?biz=1) I think the highlight is:

No one can hear you lament in space.

I think Gariott is now just working on securing his legacy.  Much like the recent President.  Maybe he will open his own library.  IN SPAAAACEEEE...

So much so that you stuck around, fighting to the end, eh Rick?

It's likely he didn't have a choice.

He did. His incompetence prevented him from doing any good.

Incompetence is not a choice. It's also a label externally applied.

Taking your medication is a choice though.

Taking off into space with subscribers money is  :awesome_for_real:.

If anything, RG creates the most epic jokes around himself. None of the HGL or Vanguard devs went into space!  :why_so_serious:

That's not what people say about at least one of them...

RG has pictures and witnesses.  :grin:

I don't know at what point he officially left the project other than the announcement that he was cutting ties about 10 days before the full shutdown was announced. Prior to then it really seemed he didn't have much interaction with TR at all, going back to launch.

I'm not angry about TR shutting down - it needed to, for the good of the MMO industry - but I think it is a bit rich that RG stands back and pontificates on keeping the title open when he was responsible for what happened. At least Roper came out and talked about how HG:L was his fault.

Well, the reports of Brad routinely shooting himself to a high orbit come from the witnesses, too. But i don't know if there's any pictures.  :why_so_serious:

Garriot suing NCsoft for $24m. (http://kotaku.com/5241911/richard-garriott-suing-ncsoft-for-24000000)

Fraud, he says. The jokes write themselves.

Another dup:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=16288.msg639848#msg639848

This is too good to be true. They should make a TV show based on Garriott and McQuaid's lives, something along the lines of Nip/Tuck. It has to include aliens and conspiracies, of course. Yum.

I don't want to see Garriot's or McQuad's bare ass while appealing to Judge Judy, thank you very much.