f13.net

Today mythic posted a placeholder site for Catacombs. The new models look really nice. I doubt this will make the game any better, especially tied in with instancing. This just goes to show that there's nothing stopping you from making an old game look better.

http://catacombs.darkageofcamelot.com/index.php - Linkage

The Kobold reminds me of Yoda.

But much improved graphically.

It's a fairly bad sign I can't tell which is the new model in 4 out of 6 of those samples without checking the caption below.

I like the look of the new models... they have less of a cartoonish feel to them.  Now, if they can find a way to add fun back into the game that might help.

DAoC has the promise of being at least mildly interesting in the endgame, but all of the broken elements just make it too much work to enjoy.  I played this game, quit, and went back recently.  I wanted to like this game... but eventually ended up leaving again.  If one of the expansions were to be accompanied by the addition of a new server, I may give it another shot... but the treadmill, botting, catass artifacts, and zerg-on-zerg pvp just makes it too hard to enjoy.

You're just getting old.  It happens to everyone.  Even me.  I had to check, too.  Memory is the first to go... then, for women, the mammeries.  I've noticed, recently, that things that should be perky aren't so perky anymore.  :(  I'm sure there is a male equivalent that starts to go all floppy after 30 or so.

Anyway... Nebu pretty much summed it up for me.  Regardless of the cosmetic changes they make, I won't play again for most of those reasons he listed.  I tired of this game fairly quickly the first time around.  Even quicker the second time.

Gasp!  MMO female PCs without pencil-sized waists?  Impossible!  No one will use them!

/sarcasm

Hehe, and I was going to post "Gasp! MMO female PCs without jugs the size of Volvos? Impossible!"

Of course, I've always given Mythic a bit of credit for being so chaste with their character models. Good show mates. Let the Koreans get the soft porn (http://www.lineage2.com).

Every time someone posts a link for Lineage II, I sit back and wish to myself that someone had made a good game to go along with those good graphics. As for DAoC, graphics aren't going to help it.

What amazes me is that the intense lauding NC Soft is getting currently has nothing to do with the one game they designed :) NC Soft is currently more a gifted publisher than they are any amount of talent in designing games for western culture, to me.

Of course, that's fine, since I couldn't give a shit who brings me the games I like and NC Soft isn't hurting at all for concentrating on their cash cow.

Whoa there Darniaq - NCSoft is an extremely gifted game maker. They have the Korean Market absolutely cornered with Lineage 1 & 2.

What they've done with all their other game investments is bought access into the States and Europe. So really they are an extremely gifted company on all fronts.

Am I the only person who thinks the graphics in Lineage II are terrible?

Perhaps I should have clarified, while monotonous, repeated, and uninspired, the graphics in lineage 2 show more promise than any of the other games available. The Unreal Engine is spectacular and I wish it were used for more games.

Of course, i am in the camp that thinks WoW, EQII, Wish, and many of the other 'graphics monsters' look awful.

You used to like the look of WoW graphics, schild... especially the machines.  What happened to change that?  I've not checked out their website since early days.  After being subjected to the horrors they call their community, I ran away and never went back. (really mind blowing, gob smacking, seriously scary place)

Anyway... lets not mistake Lineage II graphics for their lack of imagination, especially concerning their character models.  There are just way too few of them and, to tell you the truth, I found so many people looking exactly alike to be rather disturbing.  The avatars themselves, the geography, the buildings... are all quite well done.   You can run around for ages, looking like most everyone else, past nice scenery with groups of mobs standing around, through towns,  over and over and over again.  It's a bit like Groundhog Day.  The same sorts of mobs seem to pal around together in the same sorts of areas.  What they have is pretty and well done, but there's just not enough of it.  

Of course, I only made it to level 17 before the pre-order beta period was over, so I'm sure there must be things I've missed.  And I was a dorf so it was even more difficult to level and get around.  I wanted to be a dark elf but the breasts looked like they would hurt.  They made me nervous.

Signe, could you dig up where I said I liked the WoW graphics. There may have been a slip of tongue, and if so, I'd like to erase any mention of me ever liking them. I hated the style in Warcraft III and I hate them more blown up the way they are in WoW.

I don't know.  We used to chat a lot, not email... so I wouldn't have saved it.  I just sort of remember you telling me that the machines were much better looking in WoW than in Horizons and you liked the look of them.  You know me, though... I could have made it all up.  I do that sometimes.  Accidentally.

Last week I had a bizzare dream where I owned a restaurant named "Ian's Spleen". I woke up, panicked,  thinking I was late for work.  It was all too real.  I've been meaning to tell Soukyan that... well, now I have.

Yes, I am, but my point was that I don't find the new models to be a big leap forward.    Old EQ models versus new EQ models, now those you can tell right off the bat.    Old DAOC models versus these new ones it's tough to tell in those pictures about half the time.


In a world that seeks to rapidly assaults us with a bazillion and one images of scantly clad strangers we'll never know in the spirit of picking our pockets, perhaps this is for the best.   Viagra is medicating in the wrong direction.


I recall feeling much the same way about Asheron's Call II.   Horizons also gets a half-nod in that direction, as their graphics were better than average, but not good enough to justify the castration of the gameplay that the time investment involved in crafting those graphics must have involved.    (But then Horizons had other issues during it's development.  It's a remarkable thing it managed to be made at all.)

The Gamespot review said something interesting about Lineage 2:

"Depending on how you look at it, Lineage II offers either a repetitive grind or a stiff challenge. "

Followed by a 6.0 rating.   I'll take that to mean at least 40% of the games out there will find it a repetitive grind before they even stop to consider time investment the challenge of the game.

Hahaha! Not very appetizing for a name though, eh? Then again, it could be a psychic thing... I always tell my friends that I should open a restaurant someday. Rest assured that if I do, you've just named it. Bon appetit!

A couple things about that...

DAoC's models were already superior to EQ models.

The model upgrades to the DAoC models involve mostly head work and some lesser changes to the bodies.


The model engine they are upgrading to is one that boasts realistic facial expressions and a big complaint from players of DAoC since beta has always been that the faces of the DAoC models lack depth and feeling. This will add that depth. Also of note are the changes to texture detail on many of the character models and of course finally moving the boobies to proper placement on the body and adjusting proportions a little bit. Overall, the new models look very good and I, for one, am pleased with the changes they've made.

The differences are more obvious in video than the stills suggest. And having two out of six of the sample images being saracens doesn't help - since saracens already have the most photorealistic model imo.

That said they've basically done two things as far as I can see....

1) Upgraded the faces (which will have limited value since faces aren't how people get recognised in MMOGs - colours and phat lewt are how you distiguish players).

2) Upgraded the polygon count on the torso (which is nice but doesn't address the real issue, which is that there aren't enough textures).

If they want to upgrade player graphics they need to keep adding new drop armour texturse a la TOA, and find a way to let armour crafters choose from a selection of textures for their product.

Oh, and do so without sacrificing framerate in RvR.

EDIT: Oh, one other thing I *do* like is the new effect of dying armour - looks much better (see the elf sample image).

I agree on this as well.  The old faces were drawn well, and now they are replacing that with physical geometry that will make all the faces look the same.  Are they actually making different MODELS for the different faces?  Because if they don't everyone will be clones with nothing but hair to differentiate them.  Step in the WRONG direction.

Also I frankly think the old models were textured better than the new models are modeled.  In a nutshell, I think the old models in many cases looked BETTER.  Step in the wrong direction.



No kidding.  I wonder what the fuck is wrong with other people when I listen to ads bombarding me on the radio for shit like procylon (sp?).  It advertises to increase your urge and desire.  Trust me, my urge and desire need absolutely NO boosting, thank you very much.  I could use some of the opposite though.  Do you have a pill called "cold shower" or something?  Because no matter HOW much I get, it just aint never enough.

Old EQ models were boxy, but I much preferred them to the shit that came out in Luclin. Half of the Luclin models either had a stick up their ass or looked flamingly homosexual (especially the barbarian men). Luclin's new models were a mixed bag, mostly full of crap. The new DAoC models all looked better to me than their predecessors, but then I liked DAoC's models as they were anyway.

As for medical ads, hospitals and phamaceutical companies in the last decade have discovered marketing and have hit that bitch running. In my childhood, you NEVER saw an ad for a prescription drug. Now, you can't turn on the TV without being assaulted by the cure for heartburn, flacid willies and sinus troubles. I'd personally like to stick drug marketing in the same box as TV cigarette advertising, but both the drug companies and the advertising federations would lobby the shit out of that.

My favorite thing about most of those drug ads is that a fat joint would treat most ills they claim to treat, without the long list of negative side effects that are often worse than the original symptoms....

And the whole 'ask you doctor if you need (insert brand name)'. Isn't my doctor's job to tell /me/ what I need?

I hate the ones where they don't tell you what the hell the drug is for. You see some people being happy outside and you don't know if it for allergies, high cholesterol, or depression.

Last time I was at the doctor's, we got on the subject of these commercials. He told me about a friend of his who was also a doctor. He had a patient come in and demand he give her a drug called Zyrtec she saw on TV. The patient was being treated for depression and she thought this drug would help her. The commercial had some people being active outside, climbing up a mountain and crying out "Zyrtec" once they reached the top. The doctor tried to explain the drug was for allergies and not for depression, but she didn't care. After refusing to give her Zyrtec, she walked out of the office saying she was going to find another doctor.

Umm, topic? I never minded the DAoC models that much, although the female trolls were a bit creepy. I wish they had more combat animations though. You had one autoattack animation and 2 other animations for styles. It would be nice to see a wide variety of stabs, slices, and lunges.

Your Lineage pr0n is here (http://www.mischiefbox.com/images/blog/lineage_2_nsfw.jpg).

About DAoC I think they are ruining the style. Aside some horrible parts of the models, the trend isn't to offer better graphic but to discard completely the fantasy mood. Take a look at the faces and you'll see every fantasy trait vanishing in favor of a realistic appearance that looks more as a b-move make up.



But I bet you'll notice when the engine will die at 1 FPS :)



/agree

If someone links to the elf fisting screenshot from lineage 2 one more time... I swear to god I'll pk their flax.

Arguably NSFW.

Old news really.   From nude patch screen shots in Anarchy Online to lap dances in Star Wars Galaxies, I've seen far worse than that little screeny.   Pesky griefers, get a room.

Bwhahahaha, guess what?

Devs have announced new EQ models before the end of the year :D

So that'd be two new sets of EQ models, counting the ones from EQ2?

I get excited when you go all tough like that.

So it seems, and since they don't have the resources they'll outsource the whole work. If you want to read about it look at Mobhunter. They had a meeting with the fans to discuss design and the future of the game.

A lot of interesting stuff like chat channels shared between EQ and EQ2, infos about the GoD's disaster and the fact that they regret to have named EQ2 after the first.

ATITD... it's like Viagra for schild.

No, it's not, I haven't even had time to play in the last 2 days. :( Oh well. Life calls. Of course it always calls right after I pay the subscription fees.

Relax. I wasn't condemning them or calling their wide fanboi-base to question. I was simply making a statement that the accolades they are receiving from some quarters has less to do with the games they designed and developed than the games they published. I talked to the guys at Cryptic, NetDevil and ArenaNet. All had nothing but great things to say about NC Soft and their staff. NC Soft does not just label slap their name and collect a distribution fee. They work with the developers to achieve realistic sellability of their concepts. But it's not NC Soft that came up with the initial ideas for them.

They came up with Lineage 1 and 2.

If I were to evaluate NC Soft as a game design shop, I'd say they did well, for a very specific type of player that isn't me nor a few hundred thousand folks I know. What NC Soft is doing filling out their varied product line through aligning themselves with developers that have unique visions. All good standard business practices. Everyone from Mattel to Sony has done it.

But as game designers themselves? You don't need to be a talented game designer to recognize talented game designs. While NC Soft is certainly not short on game design talent, my personal recognition of their current deeds and future offerings (http://www.grimwell.com/index.php?action=fullnews&id=110) is entirely about the stuff they are not directly designing (like the stuff listed in that link).

As to the topic at hand? Yawn on the new models. They look fine, but for a game I'll never launch again.

Holy God, let them do that, so I can sit back and watch with a huge fucking box of popcorn as that shit blows up like fertilizer in a van parked outside a government building.

Honestly it probably won't be that tough for them to do Hamish as the channels they are talking about in eq are already on a server independant of the everquest servers.

It likely won't be very difficult to have eq2 servers also hit this box and interperate a text string of information.

The chat channel server is different code than the standard ooc/say/shout/tell stuff.


Kaid

But seriously, do you really think they can do that without fucking it up spectacularly? Because if you do, you have a lot more faith in them than I do.

(http://us.st5.yimg.com/store4.yimg.com/I/demotivators_1793_13433748)

Yes, and they've fucked that up.

And they fucked up EQIM.

And SWG still has chat channel problems.

EQ2 will as well.

I have no doubt that the year-old promise of EQ2 chat talking to EQ1 chat is technically achievable. I just doubt the achiever. They'll nail it eventually, but they sure as shit don't want it to be a launch selling feature. I guarantee it won't work at Launch.

I rather like the DAoC graphics upgrade. I don't think they got rid of the fantasy look. They managed to retain most of the defining features to each race (so far.) We'll have to wait and see the game in action. Sadly, at E3 they were running Frontiers and not catacombs despite there being a sign saying catacombs. Go figure.

When they release a video we'll see.

I saw the new models at the nVidia booth (had many games including DAoC) but none of them were in action. Just a bunch of side-by-sides standing NPCs to show old versus new. When I went back later, someone was running with a small group inside a huge cavernous place. They said it was Catacombs, but I've been long outta DAoC to know the difference.

What I saw worked pretty well. The lighting engine seems the same though, which is a shame. Water looked better than ever. Characters worked smoothly... in a six person group indoors, so take it for what that's worth :)

I never got to the Mythic room though. I thought it was invite-only, since this year it was byy the free-computers in that corridor between the Halls. Then I heard it wasn't but by then I had too much to see before I left at 4pm.

I suppose there's a point in here somewhere...

Oh, yea, why is it that only DAoC has capes?! None in EQ still and non in CoH still, two games screaming for them! Rar.

When capes were added to DAoC I remember a few problems coming up with them. I don't think it's an easy thing to add to a 3D game, or so they say. Not like capes make or break a game though.

Edit: I too was under the impression it was invite only. I walked past twice thinking "I should go in", but decided not to thinking of how stupid I'd feel if I was told to "STFU NOOB AND GET THE HELL OUT!" when I walked in. Oh well, maybe next year. The problem was that they were RIGHT beside Lucasarts which was invite-only. That shyed me away even more.

WoW has them but they need a lot of work to be decent, right now the result isn't outstanding.

I don't know how DAoC capes work, but do the animate based upon the users movement?  Do they flap behind you when flying?  That was the concern with the capes in CoH... you didn't to fly around with a cape hanging as if it were starched and superglued to your back.  Since CoH is rather unique in allowed your character to maintain any orientation while in flight, the cape needs to "hang' realistically at a variety of angles (as opposed to simply acting in a pre-defined fashion during a short animation).

I understand frame rates are a concern as well.  I've heard second-hand that when large groups are together in DAoC, people remove their capes so everybody isn't lagged to death.

Bruce

The reason for that is not so much the capes themselves but the fact that DAOC allows each cape to be customized with guild colours and logo.

The COH devs said that there was nothing particularly difficult about adding capes, it's just a question of time, since the cape model has to be hand animated to match every existing movement animation for the three base player models, and there was simply no way they could get it done by release.

Yes, there are pre-designed cape animations for the movements available to players in DAoC. They aren't modeled to animate based on real-time physics or anything special like that, but they do look good in the implementation that Mythic chose to use.

As to removing capes for lag help, that happened often in the past, but not so much any more since equipment is so important to stats on characters and every cape has stats that are usually quite helpful to players and some figure those stats into their Spellcrafted armor template as well.

The thing about removing capes in DAoC was an urban myth - yes raid leaders occaisionnal demanded that everyone do it - but it didn't make any significant difference to framerate. They consist of 3 small textures and don't add significantly to the poly count of the character.

Heh, go figure. I always had a top end system, so framerate was never an issue for me and I was never able to get a solid answer on whether or not it helped people. After a few times doing it, I simply started ignoring raid leader requests to remove them. I was a Healer after all, so they weren't going to boot me anyhow. ;)

I always refused to remove my cape simply because if I did I wouldn't have been able to move: I was either weighed down with arrows (back before they reduced arrow weight) or parts to assemble a battering ram.

I never removed mine because it added to most of my INT. And it was the collar cloak which was so much love. I remember being BANNED from a Caer Sidi (is that right? Been awhile) raid for not wanting to remove my clock. Boy, that was fun. Sitting in AC PL'ing people until my buddies got back. Fuck, I hate the elitists in DAoC.

for your obstetrician, its a very good sign.

I hate to ruin what was sure to be a clever joke....but you do mean Optometrist right? Obstetricians deal solely with pregnancy. Sooooooooo, I just don't get it.

I am neither pregnant nor do i require glasses. I was suggesting he needs his eyes checked.


Consider the joke broken.

I think you were just trying to call him a whiny pussy.

That's what I thought at first. But then I realized an obstetrician and a gynecologist have two very, very different jobs.

So I think the conclusion of all this is: For Geldon's gynecologist, this is a very good sign.