Recent Mark Jacobs Interview

time007

After reading the interview with Mark I'm excited about CU again.

A.  He doesn't have to answer to the masses, just the backers and the small population of players who will buy the game and pay the subscription.  This in turn will weed out the riff raff population to a minimum size.  
B.  He can do things that mainstream games don't do (i.e. no auction houses) without worrying about losing the mass population.  Games always start out with cool ideas/idealogy coming out the wazoo.  But it ends up getting watered down due to resource constraints but also due to the fact that they cave to things such as "ok everyone is unhappy there is no AH, we need one in the next patch ASAP" etc.  

So I'm excited to play with lots of like minded gamers who are willing to accept role playing such as, no insta amazon style auction house during a medieval period.  I dont mind buying from a stall or through bartering, thats how they did it back in medieval times anyways.  

Have a read of his mmorpg.com interview and you will see what i mean.  He has tons of cool ideas, and no one to answer to except his backers.  Very cool stuff.  

Also on the plus side, these forums are going to go bonkers when all the neysayers and hate trains rolling around.  "Theres no AH! This game is going to fail!!!!"  I can just imagine the threads like that once this game gets into CBT and OBT.  "WTF this game doesn't have XYZ that WoW has!!"  "You can't make a game based on PVP like this!!!!!"  We should prepare ourselves to take the high road and just be like, "ok won't be seeing you ingame" or "ok this game is not for you".  

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/926/feature/10421/page/1

Siphaed

Please realize that "mainstream" The Elder Scrolls Online also went the route of not having an auction house.  Instead the game went with Guild Vendors owned at keeps that were captured within the central PvP area.     And what ended up happening is that players created websites and 3rd party tools for trading/selling things outside the game's realm.


  Thanks to the internet being a thing, I have no doubts that there will be full CU Marketplace websites dedicated to listing what items players will have at what locations at what time of day.    There will be buy requests; there will be sell requests.  The whole thing will be a convoluted stream of gibberish mixed in with a dash of chaos for reasons.

reeereee

Siphaed said:

Please realize that "mainstream" The Elder Scrolls Online also went the route of not having an auction house.  Instead the game went with Guild Vendors owned at keeps that were captured within the central PvP area.     And what ended up happening is that players created websites and 3rd party tools for trading/selling things outside the game's realm.


  Thanks to the internet being a thing, I have no doubts that there will be full CU Marketplace websites dedicated to listing what items players will have at what locations at what time of day.    There will be buy requests; there will be sell requests.  The whole thing will be a convoluted stream of gibberish mixed in with a dash of chaos for reasons.

Right, Ragnarok Online only had player run stores but had a player created website to track and find everything and that was like 10+ years ago, will be even easier now.  Wasn't quite as convenient as a regular auction house but not that much more work. 

Siphaed

DMKano said:

One thing to keep in mind is this:

The plans prior to launch often change post launch.

This happens with MMOS - they are constantly patched and changed over time. 

Again it is impossible to predict every future variable and featues might change in the future.

Just because the devs are saying no AH now, may not mean no forever.

Actually, they do mean forever.  They're building the entire crafting system around not having an AH.  To add in one would ruin the game's crafting system, it's market system, certain aspects of Realm rewards, and other parts of the game's design.  I'm not just talking about a tiny dominoes effect here, I'm talking a "holy crap, he just knocked over the leaning tower of Pisa and it fell on the Queen of England" effect.  It would be that problematic.  

Torval said:

I remember that system from first gen games. Inevitably players get scammed and then pissed off and that's why people asked for more secure trading systems.

I'm curious how this "we don't need you" message that indies are sending out is going to pan out for them. CU is a lot more polite than many about it, whereas some are downright rude, but the end message is the same.

Well there really just needs to be a confirmation box and a back-end toggle when trying to edit/add to a trade that removes confirmations to prevent a scam.   Engage a UI highlight factor that indicates trade changes between toggles so that the user is aware of what might have changed.   

The biggest reason that games continually added safety nets to their games' trading systems was because of the strain on Customer Support in dealing with scam complaints.   Not to mention the social engineering used to scam Customer Support into believing someone was scammed/system bugged into getting free stuff all the time.   The resulting requirement was that of hiring more Customer Support and/or having ticket times suffer greatly because of it.    Basically, players too lazy/ignorant to protect themselves and want the company in charge to protect them from the "big bad scammers".

Pala

Well, yes nothing is forever but thats a very philosophical approach to looking at mmo's which have a relatively short lifespan. I think no AH feature is important while the majority is playing and while the game is at its peak. In that sense there is a very high chance that the AH will not be introduced in that period and players can count on that. Unless the developer is extremly fickle and has no idea what they are doing. 

SpottyGekko

Mark is gambling on the fact that CU's design will attract and keep enough players to make the game commercially viable. If that gamble pays off, there's no need to change the design elements.

But if it doesn't, changes will be made without a doubt.

continuumc

Plans do change and CSE has said openly that some of their ideas are a bit crazy and that they will change them if they do not work. However, I agree with time007 that CU has a major advantage over many other MMOs because of it's focused follower demographic. They came out with the concepts of these ideas from the very beginning. No one backing the game has any excuse to dislike the 'concept' of these plans, because they were available to be known from the start. Thus, the majority of people backing the game have already given their approval of those notions. Now will they work? We'll see. But they don't have as much to worry about as many other MMOs because their demographic is focused on a select group of gamers that should already be alright with the idea. Of course, implementation does not always work out. 

I do agree though that people will likely use websites to help advertise their wares and I have no issues with that. 

arcundo

To the OP post:
Quite a few MMO developers the last years have had all the right ideas. I will here mention Mortal Online. The hard part is implementing all the right ideas into immersive and fun gameplay.

I agree that a subscription base that knows what they are getting into is a key to success for this game. However I "worry" that the first M in MMO(PvP)RPG, might be to small (at east a few months after launch). MMOs need a certain amount of active players on the server for the game to be fun, and to have an edge over singleplayer games.

XAleX360

They're going to have to significantly improve graphics, animations and combat overall in order to have a chance to attract a decent pool of players. Let's hope they can do it.

Wizardry

What is the identity of this game?That is the problem i have, i can't see what this game is going to do what i haven't already done and in most cases better.Like i don't go out buying games just because,i look for something,some niche or just something that looks awesome that catches me eye.

I see stuff like "doesn't have to answer to the masses" that does nothing for me,i want a game  and a really good game not a speech.Well if anything it does sort of send a message that the game will be such a low budget game that it doesn't matter how much money it makes it has to make a profit anyhow based on low investment.

I hope he can turn out a really good game ,my gut says not likely but let's hope so,would be nice to see a low budget outfit  pull it off.I can simply look at SWTOR they needed a large audience,they invested a lot but imo did not turn out nearly good enough,so yeah big pcockets doesn't mean auto success.

Marcus-

XAleX360 said:

They're going to have to significantly improve graphics, animations and combat overall in order to have a chance to attract a decent pool of players. Let's hope they can do it.

 Thats usually the case when a game is in its alpha stage, and considering CUs alpha seems to have been mostly an engine build, even more so in this case?

Lorgarn

XAleX360 said:

They're going to have to significantly improve graphics, animations and combat overall in order to have a chance to attract a decent pool of players. Let's hope they can do it.

Indeed, this has been one of my concerns since the early beginning.

Building a proper foundation and back-end is obviously very important, especially in an RvR-game that aims to bring players large-scale battles and siegeing. However, we also need to realize that things like graphics, animations and combat fluidity is important too. The game just needs to run well on pretty much every front, there is no going around that.

I'm definitely worried, I don't want CU end up looking and playing like a 6-7 year old MMO. While I also don't want it to melt my computer during a siege-battle. It's a difficult balance to strike I'm certain.

Supposedly CBT will be the time to look for a somewhat more complete representation of what we might expect the game look and play like. I know I can't wait for it, it'll pretty much be the time where I'll decide whether or not I will be giving this game a serious go for its money come launch.

Nibs

I just thought of the easiest fix for in-game trade scams...

The 'Accept' button: Clicking this currently means 'I accept the whole deal, go ahead and and change teh database'.

Change the 'Accept' button to mean 'I accept the other person's part of this trade', and once it is clicked the other person cannot change their side of the deal without the whole thing resetting.

So, I'm doing a trade with you. We agree on X gold in exchange for items A and B.

We open the trade window. You enter your X gold, I hit 'Accept' as you have entered the correct amount. You can no longer change the deal. You cannot add or remove anything. However, I cannot receive the gold until you click 'Accept', indicating that you are happy that I am trading the right items.

At this point my only options are to either add items to my side of the deal or click 'Cancel'. No trade will occur until you click to indicate that you accept my part of the deal. At which point the trade is concluded.

You can't scam me, I can't scam you. Simples.

Or to take it a step further/too far to try and avoid the inevitable complaints of 'I entered too much money and they click 'Accept'' make each side click 2 'Accept' buttons. 1 for their side (I am happy with what Ihave entered) and 1 for the other side (I am happy with what they have entered). The trade concludes when all 4 buttons have been clicked.

Lorgarn

DMKano said:

CU is running a lean dev team that doesn't have the manpower nor the funds to do the AAA animation/graphics polish.

Expecting this out of them is an unrealistic expectation.

Now this doesn't mean they can't get it to look and play pretty decent

Naturally, I don't expect a Triple-A quality game. However, I hope that CU will end up looking, feeling and playing somewhat like an MMO from 2015. Again, not expecting a Crytek level of performance and fidelity, just something that is 'enough'.

We'll see, wherever, however and whatever CU turns out to be, I'll never regret backing this project. Crowdfunding can be done right, CSE has shown us that time and time again.

Filbur

CSE_Tyler posted about this a while ago:

Beta should be a time to show off. So far we've been mostly working with one environment set of assets that I made, mostly, some time ago. We've also had the character textures @ what is right now, half the size we plan on supporting. Moving forward we'll be adding several new environments, and bumping up character fidelity. Along with that we'll be working on turning this into a game. So there will be plenty of new stuff to show off. We still have some bells and whistles planned to improve visuals, but as they are not the most important part to delivering a fun game in the near term, they will probably be pushed over some core things like working on combat, sieging, large maps, etc. We'll have more time for "sparkles" once we are in beta.

When you show your friends, remind them we're going for 500 player battles. To do that effectively we can't go the Crisis route. Our goal is managing the art in a middle range where it looks great, but can support the core tenants we layed out in the Kickstarter. Granted, I'll still be working my butt off to get pretty but still runs Thankfully I've got some great engineers in my corner that know how to do looks good but still cheap. Doing that is really hard, which is why we've put so much effort into hiring the right people and building the engine from the ground up to support this game.

Faces preview:

Gdemami

Siphaed said:

Actually, they do mean forever.  They're building the entire crafting system around not having an AH.  To add in one would ruin the game's crafting system, it's market system, certain aspects of Realm rewards, and other parts of the game's design.  I'm not just talking about a tiny dominoes effect here, I'm talking a "holy crap, he just knocked over the leaning tower of Pisa and it fell on the Queen of England" effect.  It would be that problematic. 

AH has nothing to do with crafting or other systems. It is a just UI.


They want to avoid AH for sentimental reasons only since there are no reasonable ones...

Marcus-

Gdemami said:

Siphaed said:

Actually, they do mean forever.  They're building the entire crafting system around not having an AH.  To add in one would ruin the game's crafting system, it's market system, certain aspects of Realm rewards, and other parts of the game's design.  I'm not just talking about a tiny dominoes effect here, I'm talking a "holy crap, he just knocked over the leaning tower of Pisa and it fell on the Queen of England" effect.  It would be that problematic. 

AH has nothing to do with crafting or other systems. It is a just UI.


They want to avoid AH for sentimental reasons only since there are no reasonable ones...

Maybe they want to avoid an AH to bring back some social aspects to an MMO, as opposed to running everything you want to do through a UI in solo mode. 

time007

Wizardry said:

What is the identity of this game?That is the problem i have, i can't see what this game is going to do what i haven't already done and in most cases better.Like i don't go out buying games just because,i look for something,some niche or just something that looks awesome that catches me eye.

I see stuff like "doesn't have to answer to the masses" that does nothing for me,i want a game  and a really good game not a speech.Well if anything it does sort of send a message that the game will be such a low budget game that it doesn't matter how much money it makes it has to make a profit anyhow based on low investment.

I hope he can turn out a really good game ,my gut says not likely but let's hope so,would be nice to see a low budget outfit  pull it off.I can simply look at SWTOR they needed a large audience,they invested a lot but imo did not turn out nearly good enough,so yeah big pcockets doesn't mean auto success.

I would go to their website and read up on the interviews Mark Jacobs has done.  If you played DAOC and liked it, chances are you will like this game when it comes out.  

Mark has done lots of interviews on his vision for this game so i recommend reading those as I can't do it justice on this thread.  Its definitely based around meaningful 3 faction large scale PVP though.  and by meaningful that is where I won't do it justice and so just try to read/watch his interviews (though if you played DAOC you know what meaningful large scale PVP is. (RVR is the term we used in that game).  

Pepeq

Don't believe anything until you see it... because in the end, Mark Jacobs isn't the one playing the game, you are.  His opinions, theories, et al mean squat compared to that.

Univers0

From the info it is all about RvR.  This appeals to me as I did not enjoy having to do pve instances in WAR just to stay competitive.  Do you think it is possible to do nothing but RVR in CU, and attain the best gear just from that?

Siphaed

Univers0 said:

From the info it is all about RvR.  This appeals to me as I did not enjoy having to do pve instances in WAR just to stay competitive.  Do you think it is possible to do nothing but RVR in CU, and attain the best gear just from that?

There are no PvE drops in this game.  There are no gear drops at all (not even from players or a loot table). 

If you want to do nothing but RvR, you'll be able to do that with a daily reward (coin and/or raw mats) from your Realm's King based on your performance.  However, you'll need to interact with a player crafter in order to obtain gear to be successful at RvR.   Either a guild -if you're guilded- crafter or one in a player market within the cities. 


The only PvE there is even going be in the game is going to be PvE creatures -for the sake of killing for crafting materials-, NPC guards, and a few more PvE creatures in the Depths (again, crafting material drops only).   There are no PvE quests or any form of PvE progression within CU.

time007

Pepeq said:

Don't believe anything until you see it... because in the end, Mark Jacobs isn't the one playing the game, you are.  His opinions, theories, et al mean squat compared to that.

nah, thats the thing about reputations.  if someone has a good reputation then what they say can actually be worth something.

Distopia

DMKano said:

CU is running a lean dev team that doesn't have the manpower nor the funds to do the AAA animation/graphics polish.

Expecting this out of them is an unrealistic expectation.

Now this doesn't mean they can't get it to look and play pretty decent

In this day and age it isn't exactly that hard to offer something that looks good or even great, it depends really on the software they obtain as well as the quality of the artist's work. No it won't be groundbreaking, it will also be grounded based on the budget, it could still look really good though, as many indies coming out today do.

bcbully

Univers0 said:

From the info it is all about RvR.  This appeals to me as I did not enjoy having to do pve instances in WAR just to stay competitive.  Do you think it is possible to do nothing but RVR in CU, and attain the best gear just from that?

That's the plan since there will be no dungeons and such.