Faces of Mankind?

[HaemishM]

So then it should fit in perfectly with the pantheon of MMOG's.

[plummerx]

So then it should fit in perfectly with the pantheon of MMOG's.

It's becoming so routine with mmog's one wonders if releases are planned to occur in the middle of the development phase, instead of the end.

[schild]

So then it should fit in perfectly with the pantheon of MMOG's.

It's becoming so routine with mmog's one wonders if releases are planned to occur in the middle of the development phase, instead of the end.

IIRC, Shadowbane sort of started this phenomena. Mostly, it's the big big games that are playable in beta. Independent companies just aren't quite ready to tackle the big MMOG thing. Niche is fine, but most companies go for pie in the sky instaed of niche.

Betas are just a marketing tool anyway. They don't mean jack shit anymore, they tend to hurt more than help, and it seems that no matter how much bitching the public does - QA has to support them or sweeping changes won't get made. The other problem is that QA is chock full of mouthbreathers who understand design on the most fundamental level (the levels in which the "fun" part does not exist).

[HaemishM]

Actually, I wouldn't say it's only the big companies that get release down. Mythic was an indy company, and they managed to have one of the smoothest releases ever. And the phenomenon happened long before Shadowbane. Hell, both EQ and UO were months premature, and the first month or two of release were absolutely hellish. Maybe not Faces of Mankind bad, but bad nonethless. DAoC was really the first smooth MMOG release in history. And it came on the heels of another complete clusterfuck of a release in Anarchy Online, as well as that other cluster fuck release of the same year, WWII Online.

Really, the MMOG industry is loaded with a history of completely awful releases made with the knowledge that the first few months of paid service were really just betas with a box.

[Sunbury]

Actually its that way with most software.   First releases (before 1st service pack) is normally something to be avoided.  Things like Visual Studio, ADO, etc, are no exception.

Until you have the masses hitting on somthing, software+ hardware combos has grown so complex its impossible to test fully.

[Mesozoic]

I see that one of their screenshots - and potentially, one of their zones - is called "NYC Ground Zero."

...

[Megrim]

Er, no. Pay closer attention - one of their screenshots is entitled "penthouse party" ...and all the characters involved are male. Mankind indeed.

 - meg

[Alkiera]

Er, no. Pay closer attention - one of their screenshots is entitled "penthouse party" ...and all the characters involved are male. Mankind indeed.

 - meg

There are also more people in that screenshot than I saw in running around the game for half an hour...  Not that people weren't there, I'd occasionally see names under the targetting cursor... but no models.

Alkiera

[geldonyetich]

Since I haven't visited this fine forum lately, I just found out about Face of Mankind today.   (Nice facelift on the front page, btw.)

Some of the features sound pretty hardcore:
* Massively Multiplayer first person shooter interface.
* Permadeath if you run out of clones.
* 9 factions to choose from, classified as government, corperate, or clan.  (Yes, Player Justice enabled)
* Big, complex economy.

I haven't actually played the game yet, I will have given it a spin within the next hour.  Pity to read the game is awkward to learn how to play.   (Oh look, a tutorial.)

Regarding the lag issues you've been running into, the developers have graciously offered this little bit of info on their front page:

Hello everyone,

Yesterday at 23:00 GMT we opened the gates to the world of Face of Mankind, and what a hell of a ride it was! The server cluster was truly flooded with players.

During the first 10 hours of Open Beta over 31,000 logins were handled by the cluster! As you have probably noticed this caused a lot of lag and instability. Just to make sure everyone understands the current situation, I’d like to use a moment to explain what we’re doing.

This is basically a stress test. We start with the minimum cluster configuration, which means the minimum amount of single server machines building it. Each new test will contain of 2 steps. First we will try to optimize the code to the absolute maximum to check if the current amount of servers can handle the load. Then, if the servers are not able to host this number of players, we will expand the cluster with new machines and repeat step 1.

The Face of Mankind webserver (containing the homepage, forums and launcher screen) is overloaded as well. Later this evening we are going to bring an extra server online for the forums.

Until then, please bear with us. Everything is being taken care of, and our closed beta testers know how hard we work to get things fixed and smooth and to keep them that way

In order to adapt the game world to such large numbers of players, a few changes have been made. First of all, starting locations are no longer just on Earth, they are now spread onto the colonies as well. Also, 50,000 credits have been given to each existing player, so there is no need to create alternate accounts.

One of our main priorities in the coming weeks will be the economy. We will continue to monitor and balance the flow of money and equipment and balance things accordingly.

The Duplex Systems Staff

So that's what's going on.  Though I imagine that's little consolation if, for some reason, you really want to play.

[Rodent]

Here I was expecting something along the lines of Faces of Death in an online enviroment... I'm so dissapointed.

[Hoax]

Fyi I think this is worth checking out again for anyone who is sick of EQ clones.  Oh and my apologies for starting a new thread and thanks for the admin for directing me to this one.  Like I said, I post from work and didn't have time to hunt down this one.

The socket errors (ala SB) seem gone for almost everyone.  You still get some random disconnects and I'm sure some of you might have a more buggy experience then me.  But over the last 3 days it has been as playable as WoW (I get booted from it due to what really seems to be a mem leak these days).

Now the biggest problems are corrupt cops and criminals on rampages in the main shopping area (new york).

That and it has a rediculously steep learning curve...

here are some links, I would read them all, unless you enjoy not knowing what to do and just complaining about it.  In which case, dont read anything and try to play.

http://193.151.4.102/forum/showthread.php?t=4415
list of a bunch of guides..

http://193.151.4.102/forum/showthread.php?t=5731
thread that gives more gun explination (one of the most frustrating things)

http://193.151.4.102/forum/showthread.php?t=5802
a simple guide I wrote after my first night of playing, literally just a walk through of everything I wished I had read somewhere before I started.

here are two things I want to add now:

There are two nickname type things (forgot their damn names again) the shorter one is where you put your faction abbriv or something stupid like lol, bbq, ect  The other one is the name people will call you.  Your full name is given out for people to send you mail and the name that will be listed if you join a mission.  I'm sure it shows up other places as well but I dont know.

Hacking doors, if you go to a colony and you need to hack the door its pretty simple, you can find detailed guides on the forum if you search or if you've played masterimind you should be able to figure it out.  The bars that appear after you try a combination are how many you got right.  There is no way to fail at hacking a door unless you are retarded or have no fingers, once you figure it out.  I'm sure this will change in the future of course.

Oh one more thing, you will delete your first character, because its very easy to run yourself out of money and w/ the limited player base you can't rely on their being missions to get yourself some more from your faction.

w/ that in mind here is the quick way to delete your character...

-After starting the game, before you hit play go to the top of the box and hit character then hit delete.  You need to have had the current character for 24rl hours to do this but if you are past that point it will take effect instantly and you can then just hit play and login and you will get to make a new one.