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A tiny nugget more news on EQ: Next

135

Comments

  • ice-vortexice-vortex Member UncommonPosts: 960

    Here's a screenshot from ArcheAge. It has blurry textures.

     

    http://cdn2.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/20110923_183216749.jpg

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,346

    Well of course you repeat textures.  You have to repeat textures, and you have to do it a lot.  The alternative is to have a very small game world that is pretty barren and still sticks you with either low resolution textures or short view distances.

    If you don't repeatedly use the same textures at all, in a typical MMORPG game world, you'd be probably be looking at an installation size in the hundreds of gigabytes, and possibly into the terabytes.

    Furthermore, repeating textures is a huge optimization to cut down on loading times, video memory usage, and GPU load.  The reduced GPU load is because you don't have to switch textures nearly so many times.  Repeating textures to an appropriate degree can easily let you quadruple the resolution of all textures while still getting much higher performance across the board no matter what hardware you're running.

    -----

    Given that Vanguard game engine basically requires having an SSD to avoid hitching, I'm strongly skeptical of claims that it's such a great engine.  I'm also not at all fond of seeing the screen completely freeze whenever you cross a region boundary.  That's not seamless in any reasonably sense of the word, even if it doesn't put up a loading screen.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,346
    Originally posted by ShakyMo
    Plus there's like ZERO load time in ps2 which is important for the sort of game it is. High rez textures mean longer load times, more memory usage and more gpu memory usage. Hi rez textures also mean smaller playing fields OR repeating the same textures a lot in the same playing field.

    From what I gather eqn is going to be ALL open world like PS2.

    All else equal, higher resolution textures do have a huge impact on GPU memory requirements, but fairly little impact on loading times and system memory usage.

    The big barrier on loading times is waiting for the hard drive to physically spin to the right spot before it can do anything.  On a properly defragmented drive, you pay that penalty exactly once, regardless of the size of the texture.

    As for system memory usage, you don't keep textures in system memory for long.  You load them, pass them along into video memory, and then clear them out of system memory.

  • ArclanArclan Member UncommonPosts: 1,550

    I sure hope they don't spend any $ on voice acting.

    I hope they don't stick to the same 'one code base' mentality that cripled Everquest. Forcing all players to endure evolutionary game changes every six months had the effect of alienating 99% of players.

    Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
    In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,346
    Originally posted by Arclan

    I sure hope they don't spend any $ on voice acting.

    I hope they don't stick to the same 'one code base' mentality that cripled Everquest. Forcing all players to endure evolutionary game changes every six months had the effect of alienating 99% of players.

    I wouldn't go so far as to hope for no voice acting at all.  Having voiceovers in intro videos and a relative handful of really big story moments can be nice.  But I do hope they don't go overboard with it like SWTOR did.

    What is the "one code base" mentality that you refer to?

  • ice-vortexice-vortex Member UncommonPosts: 960
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by ShakyMo
    Plus there's like ZERO load time in ps2 which is important for the sort of game it is. High rez textures mean longer load times, more memory usage and more gpu memory usage. Hi rez textures also mean smaller playing fields OR repeating the same textures a lot in the same playing field.

    From what I gather eqn is going to be ALL open world like PS2.

    All else equal, higher resolution textures do have a huge impact on GPU memory requirements, but fairly little impact on loading times and system memory usage.

    The big barrier on loading times is waiting for the hard drive to physically spin to the right spot before it can do anything.  On a properly defragmented drive, you pay that penalty exactly once, regardless of the size of the texture.

    As for system memory usage, you don't keep textures in system memory for long.  You load them, pass them along into video memory, and then clear them out of system memory.

    If the game is loading 4GB of textures into your memory compared to 512MB it certainly would have a major effect on loading times.

     

    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by Arclan

    I sure hope they don't spend any $ on voice acting.

    I hope they don't stick to the same 'one code base' mentality that cripled Everquest. Forcing all players to endure evolutionary game changes every six months had the effect of alienating 99% of players.

    I wouldn't go so far as to hope for no voice acting at all.  Having voiceovers in intro videos and a relative handful of really big story moments can be nice.  But I do hope they don't go overboard with it like SWTOR did.

    What is the "one code base" mentality that you refer to?

    I don't think there should be major story moments. It's an MMO, not a single player game.

  • niceguy3978niceguy3978 Member UncommonPosts: 2,047
    Originally posted by Latronus
    Originally posted by SaltyBogey

    EQ Next will be a massive failure... Don't believe me?

     

    Check out SOE fantastic Light-Forge engine on Planetside 2... It's laughable at best

    If it is a failure, it will have nothing to do with the engine.  It will have everything to do with Smed turning everything he touches into complete crap.  Besides, they won't make the same mistake they did in EQ2 and make the engines performance based off the CPU instead of the graphics card... Oh wait, this is $OE I'm talking about... Anything is possible I guess.

    Everything he touches?  I may not like any current SOE games (I would like EQ if it had aged better) but that was his baby.  He put the team together that built the game.  

  • ArclanArclan Member UncommonPosts: 1,550

    Give players time to talk while in a group. Otherwise friendships won't form; and friendships keep players around for years.

    Action-oriented combat + out of combat regen = no time to chat = no friendships. IMO.

    Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
    In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit

  • ice-vortexice-vortex Member UncommonPosts: 960
    Originally posted by Arclan

    Give players time to talk while in a group. Otherwise friendships won't form; and friendships keep players around for years.

    Action-oriented combat + out of combat regen = no time to chat = no friendships. IMO.


    You don't have a guild with voice chat?

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,346
    Originally posted by ice-vortex
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by ShakyMo
    Plus there's like ZERO load time in ps2 which is important for the sort of game it is. High rez textures mean longer load times, more memory usage and more gpu memory usage. Hi rez textures also mean smaller playing fields OR repeating the same textures a lot in the same playing field.

    From what I gather eqn is going to be ALL open world like PS2.

    All else equal, higher resolution textures do have a huge impact on GPU memory requirements, but fairly little impact on loading times and system memory usage.

    The big barrier on loading times is waiting for the hard drive to physically spin to the right spot before it can do anything.  On a properly defragmented drive, you pay that penalty exactly once, regardless of the size of the texture.

    As for system memory usage, you don't keep textures in system memory for long.  You load them, pass them along into video memory, and then clear them out of system memory.

    If the game is loading 4GB of textures into your memory compared to 512MB it certainly would have a major effect on loading times.

    If you're trying to load 4 GB into video memory for texture buffers alone, I'm not sure if that will cause a crash or merely horrible performance on most video cards.  A 6 GB version of a Radeon HD 7970 could take it, but the game would be unplayable on any other consumer video cards.

    Even 512 MB of video memory for texture buffers alone would be problematic on many video cards, so while you could offer it as a high resolution textures option, you'd better allow players to turn it off.  And even that 512 MB if loaded all at once is only about 4 seconds on a modern hard drive, apart from the delays to switch from one file to the next that don't depend on the texture resolution.

  • toddzetoddze Member UncommonPosts: 2,150
    If your worried about graphics, stick to your single player online rpg's that you call MMO's. Give me a plethora of content engaging gameplay, and I could'nt care less about graphics.

    Waiting for:EQ-Next, ArcheAge (not so much anymore)
    Now Playing: N/A
    Worst MMO: FFXIV
    Favorite MMO: FFXI

  • CalmOceansCalmOceans Member UncommonPosts: 2,437
    Originally posted by toddze
    If your worried about graphics, stick to your single player online rpg's that you call MMO's. Give me a plethora of content engaging gameplay, and I could'nt care less about graphics.

    For me it is partly about graphics too, if I wanted content I can already access it, it's called EQ1, it has more content and expansions than any MMO out there.

    So the gameplay and graphics would need to be amawing to convince me.

  • redcappredcapp Member Posts: 722
    Well, I'm excited.  But this is meaningless.  Everybody hypes up their game. 
  • WizardryWizardry Member LegendaryPosts: 19,332

    There is some really skewed statements in there.

    He says his staff is not afrtaid to call BS,yet all EQ2 has been doing is copy cat Wow and the same linear questing design over and over.The ONLY things worth calling new or at least desirable are added cash shop>>>Housing and the dungeon maker.So you paY a sub then have to pay more again,no thanks to disrespecting the paying customers.

    So if his staff can't get it right now,why would i be encouraged that they like what  they see?

    Also not everyone has copied Eq,FFXI is the ONLY game to NOT copy cat linear questing.Sub class is Square Enix's sole design,they also have created more unique content ideas that anyone else.

    I guess you think everyone is copying you if you only live in the mass media market or spend everyday trying to copy Wow.Also when you make it known that you are going all out cash shop,then customers will stay way before the gaem ever hiots Beta.

    One other thing,you cannot look at EQ and say well it has been going 11 years,that MUST be the design we need.That is dumb,people are tired of it.You only get people sticking around because they are afraid to move on and many are afraid to let go of all their hard work,same reason bored people stay in Wow.

    What this whole shebam tells me is Smedley cannot think outside the box,it sounds like he is still living in the past but THINKS he has some new ideas.I am pretty sure these so called new ideas are the same old but with a twist to support more cash shop,i would bet on it.

    Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.

  • TheocritusTheocritus Member LegendaryPosts: 9,737
        I hope EQ next goes back to the days where we were just thrown into the world and had to figure things out (ie pre tutorial days) for ourselves....Im so sick of hand holding in MMOs it isnt even funny...I better not see any exclamation points, question marks, or any other grammatical things over NPC heads.
  • grimfallgrimfall Member UncommonPosts: 1,153
    Originally posted by ice-vortex
    Originally posted by Arclan

    Give players time to talk while in a group. Otherwise friendships won't form; and friendships keep players around for years.

    Action-oriented combat + out of combat regen = no time to chat = no friendships. IMO.


    You don't have a guild with voice chat?

    He just said you need friendships to form.  If he already had a guild with guild chat...

    I think he's right, though.  You got to know players running around and waiting for mana to regen in EQ1.  Now, since you're constantly mashing buttons, you don't really get to know the people you game with.

  • grimfallgrimfall Member UncommonPosts: 1,153
    Originally posted by Theocritus
        I hope EQ next goes back to the days where we were just thrown into the world and had to figure things out (ie pre tutorial days) for ourselves....Im so sick of hand holding in MMOs it isnt even funny...I better not see any exclamation points, question marks, or any other grammatical things over NPC heads.

    As frustrated as all of us have been waiting for EQ Next, imagine how hard it has been on Blizzard, waiting to see the new game they're going to rip-off for Titan!

  • CalmOceansCalmOceans Member UncommonPosts: 2,437
    Originally posted by ice-vortex
    Originally posted by Arclan

    Give players time to talk while in a group. Otherwise friendships won't form; and friendships keep players around for years.

    Action-oriented combat + out of combat regen = no time to chat = no friendships. IMO.


    You don't have a guild with voice chat?

    Voice chat? Do you even know what EQ is like.

    You think there are many guilds that use voice chat? 99% of EQ's guilds never use voice chat and never will.

    Our guld will never use voice chat, and there are many reaons as to why, organisational skills in guilds that have over 100 people online at any time big can not be done with voice chat, you can not manage guilds that scale with voice chat.

    Voice chat is extremely unpopular in EQ. This isn't WoW where you only need to manage 20 players, raiding is 54 players minimum, with usually 10-20 people benched.

    Everything is done by typing in channels with a hierarchy, none of it is done with voice chat, voice chat is 100% useless for large-scale raiding.

     

    Raid channel-> Officer channel -> Class channel

    MT channel

    Loot channel -> DKP channel

    Guild channel

    Bench channel

    Recruit channel

     

    Voice chat is useless.

     

    The guy you responded to is 100% right, the number one reason the comminity established itself is through chatting in the game, voice chat lobbies are not only impractical, they also break up the community which is detrimental to the game.

  • aspekxaspekx Member UncommonPosts: 2,167
    Originally posted by Indol

    I, for one, am willing to give SOE the benefit of the doubt since we know too little to make a judgement at this point aside from the possibility that what Smedley says is true. If it is true, then we may be looking at something that truly evolves the genre. We can but hope.

     

    i currently play SoE games. and enjoy them. if all goes well i plan on at least trying EQNext. however, i seriously doubt that Smed&Co. have the creative wherewithal to truly reshape the genre.

    "There are at least two kinds of games.
    One could be called finite, the other infinite.
    A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
    an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
    Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse

  • aspekxaspekx Member UncommonPosts: 2,167
    Originally posted by CalmOceans

    Voice chat is useless.

     

    The guy you responded to is 100% right, the number one reason the comminity established itself is through chatting in the game, voice chat lobbies are not only impractical, they also break up the comminity which is detrimental to the game.

    i wholeheartedly agree with this.

    "There are at least two kinds of games.
    One could be called finite, the other infinite.
    A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
    an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
    Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse

  • AeliousAelious Member RarePosts: 3,521
    Major laugh at the pic CalmOceans. That's obviously a misplacement of a texture in PS2 and not a correct representation of the game's graphics. That said there is a reason why the textures are not as sharp as other games and of course it's because of the big battles with 100's of people.

    Have you tried changing the config file to actually get max graphics out of PS2. I haven't tried it but when you see the sharp pictures in PS2 articles that's how your seeing it.
  • AeliousAelious Member RarePosts: 3,521
    As far as voice chat it will be great in EQN I think. PS2 already has proximity voice enabled and with SoEMote also using facial recognition can you imagine what that will do to public places in game? You will actually be able to just walk up to someone and have a fully animated conversation with a stranger.
  • sgtalonsgtalon Member UncommonPosts: 129

    Looks pretty awesome to me. I wish i could find some pictures of the huge battles. I will have to get my own sometime.

    Anyone that isn't sure about PS2 just go try it out. It is totally free. The game is awesome.

  • kjempffkjempff Member RarePosts: 1,759

     – and these guys are gamers, so they’re not afraid to call bullshit when they see us make a mistake. It’s happened before. We’ve made mistakes, and the guys internally will call us on it every time.

    Maybe you should have listened the past 10 year when the guys "called on you"... errr what is that smell ? It smells like Smedley pie. I guess a good MMORPG could come out of SOE, but I want the proof in my hands before I beleive it. Will define the next generation of mmos, hmm GW2re did we hear that before?

     

  • XhieronXhieron Member UncommonPosts: 132

    TLDR: Brief hype time, long combat pacing, infrequent but non-zero voice acting.

     

    I agree with the sentiment that actiony combat with no downtime is good for playability but absolutely awful for community-building.  Sure, voice-chatting guilds is great, but I'm not familiar with many guilds that do their recruiting by giving out their TS/Vent info to any stranger willing to accept a party invite.  Sometimes you want to get to know people without having them on voice com, and sometimes, heaven forbid, you just want to listen to some damn music!  Having a slower pacing to combat action and a lower level of twitchiness is ideal for that.  For that matter, instant and near-instant travel has some of the same issues.  I had a lot of good conversations with folks while on auto-follow in EQ1 and FFXI en route from the teleport-in point to camp.

    I'm not suggesting that EQN should have five-minute-long-even-with-KEI downtime--after all, some people want to solo sometimes--but GW2, for instance, is way, way too far on the twitchy end of the spectrum (and that's the least of my few but major criticisms for that game).  I think it's possible to have time to talk without feeling like the time is wasted if you're not spending it talking.

     

    On the voice acting, I think there's a place for it.  Honestly I'd be a little miffed if EQN had zero voice acting.  Hell, even vanilla WOW had voice acting, scripted and brief though it may have been.  However, I also agree that SWTOR's level of voice acting was symptomatic of their misallocation of development resources to story at the expense of life-sustaining gameplay systems.  GW2 had decent acting, but while it's not a major issue of mine with respect to them, I'll admit that at times it felt a little wasted and unnecessary.  I don't want voiced conversations as part of the gameplay except in very, very rare circumstances.  I do, however, want voice acting as another kind of sound effect.

    Here's the deal: If people are playing an MMO, there's a vast and overwhelming probability that they can read.  Now, to be fair, some of them can't.  You'll have some illiterate or semi-literate folks, and occasionally you'll have a five-year-old (yes--yes you will; that's reality).  But nobody's outraged that the tooltips aren't voiced for player accessibility, so I don't feel like every single line of dialogue in the game needs to be voiced.

    A few examples where having voiceovers is good in a sandbox:  To the extent that you have NPCs, they need to be voiced when they're trying to get attention.  Hearing "Hey, you, come'ere!" and the like in GW2 was an excellent tool to direct my attention to an NPC with information to offer, even if the result was that I disregarded it.  If you have cutscenes, for whatever reason, you need some voice acting.  In a sandbox environment, if you have an event during the life of the game that's going to make a major change as a result of player action/inaction (e.g., the nukes are falling/Bahamut is coming, the floating island is breaking off and rising into the air, the Emperor is being deposed and beheaded), your game should already have the tech to push out the change with some flair.  And finally, you need voice acting for a lot of stuff that, while we sometimes take it for granted, is absolutely integral to any game with any NPCs:  Eventually somebody's gonna set a village on fire.  Ideally it's a player village, but whether it is or isn't, you should put in the time and money to record some quality I'm-on-fire screaming, along with some "OH SWEET JESUS! TIMMY'S IN THAT HOUSE!" one-liners, whether there's any Timmy-rescuing quests or not (hint: there shouldn't be.  Fuck Timmy).  And of course it goes without saying, you're going to have to record combat grunts for the PCs anyway, so you might as well throw in some extras to show us you care.

     

    Finally, someone mentioned earlier the aspiration that a company would develop their game quietly and then just release it, and I really couldn't agree more.  SOE, like everybody else, has paid advertising staff on retainer; they probably have more than one guy whose entire job is to determine what the falloff range for hype from a particular marketing device is going to be, and there have got to be peer reviewed studies of long-term online software interest-generation out there by now.  Does the literature really say that talking about your game monthly for five God-damned years before its release date produces a net increase in revenue?  Shit, you've got people who were planning to buy the game when you first announced it who have died by the time it came out.  --and not even in accidents!  You know there were people out there who heard about Guild Wars 2 back in 2007, got excited, then got cancer, went into remission, and then relapsed and died before it came out!  I know the development cycle is long, and I want to know what's going on as much as the next guy, but trust me when I say that once you've got the hook in me for a game, the only thing you can do by continuing to trickle out information is lose me.

    So on that note, I do want to know what EQN is going to be; I want an idea of the basic model, and sure, I'd be happy to take a look at some screenshots and a video.  But I really don't have the time or the energy to get on another hype rollercoaster.

    Peace and safety.

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