Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
August Greenlight List- No Mortal Online
Slapshot1188
Member LegendaryPosts: 16,983
http://steamcommunity.com/games/765/announcements/detail/1586676867625499585
At least Door Kickers made it...
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Comments
This is probably the game I have loved most this decade in MMORPGs.
It is a shame it gets passed over so often. It is at its basic design the game many of us ask for so often when we say we want a living sandbox world that doesn't just revolve around combat, ganking, and linear gameplay.
These types of games aren't for everyone. I was hoping for the greenlight though just so more people who are looking for a good sandbox game might have the exposure to it. I can't count how many people I have seen begging for this game only to respond with "Mortal what???" when I suggest they try it.
Especially with the addition of the free to play model it is a good time for them to get some exposure out there.
Yeah except for the part where its bug ridden, unstable and basically boring as shit.
Its false sandbox as even it looks like the game is giving you options, ultimatly, you realise there are only a few viable useful of those, the rest is there for figuration.
They spent more time designing weiners for characters and horse peeing than on the actual world.
Trust me, its a good thing this game doesn't get any exposure because instead of "Mortal what???" people would likely respond "Oh yeah that horrible game that's supposed to be sandbox?? you think its good and you want us to play? lol dude you're pathetic"
So yeah basically people would mock you, so its better they never hear about Mortal Online.
there are 2 types of mmo, imitators and innovaters.
I was gonna say the same thing as the dude above. But also, the combat is shit.
We're still waiting for a sandbox, but mortal online is not the one. There's way too many bugs. Unreal engine for an mmo with ragdoll and everyother things was never a good idea to begin with. The first mmo with the unreal engine is Lineage 2, but it does not even feel like it use the unreal engine that we all know.
It takes a whole day(no sarcasm) To install MO and most older computer that are supposed to be strong enough to run the game can't because of problem sush as the black shader problem. I tried it on my brother's computer and i can play MO perfectly with the lowest setting, but on mine, everything is black and on top of that, i can't login. My computer can run more games than my big bro's. They need to optimize that game a bit to fix that.
A lot of server disconnection and they must report server down/server up on the forum in a stickied thread. That's insane lol.
What i like about MO: Mounted combat, crafting, pve, the sandbox, territory control, housing, siege...
But all this is not enough when the balance is bad at a point where archers are not found in game at all unless they are mounted. Magic system is wack. It's like a target based game for mages. As for warriors, they sprint forward to fight, they never strafe or backpedal because it's useless. In a video, i see no one parrying to counter. They turn into a turtle or a lion. I just wish the combat was more like in skyrim.
C:\Users\FF\Desktop\spin move.gif
Other than that I feel the game needs more exposure, I never really claimed anything other than "It is at its basic design the game many of us ask for so often."
Pointing out that the game has a few bugs or balance issues doesn't really change the fact that for people who enjoy this sort of game they can play this, Eve, or give up on sandbox games altogether and go play WOW.
Sucks you guys had a bad experience with the game. But our choices are so limited when it comes to these games that some of us just don't have the luxury of writing something off over balance issues or bugs.
When it comes to fantasy sandbox, I don't see anything with more sand in it out there. Maybe Darkfall? But from what i've gathered DF is a bit more PVP centered. I can't imagine it would have as in depth a crafting system but maybe they'll do a free trial some day and i'll find out.
The WoW argument is pretty invalid at this point as big companies are starting to lean towards sandbox ideas in order to attract new players.
If you have taken a look at the SOE conference EverQuest Next seems pretty awesome and completely sandbox, but without the crappy aspect of hardcore sandbox.
Elder Scrolls Online is also coming and seems pretty sweet. Mortal Online doesn't need any exposure, on the countrary it should be buried very deep and fall into oblivion, it gives a very bad image of indie projects and sandbox MMOs in general.
Without getting into what the term "sandbox" means, just accept that to me personally i've seen no indication that EQN will be what I consider a sandbox game. TESO certainly is not.
Mortal Online isn't a bad game. It is a great game.
It is also a difficult game with very few accessibility features and because of this and several other things many people just do not like it and that is fine. The game shouldn't "fall into oblivion" though -- it is unique, well designed, and a lot of fun for those of us who are actually looking for this sort of game. Wishing a game that I enjoy to disappear is not good for me or you.
There is no point in running the game down though just because you do not like it. There is especially no point in telling someone who is a fan of this sort of sandbox game to look at TESO. That is going to have about as much impact as if I were to tell you to go play Mortal Online.
The WOW thing wasn't so much meant to be offensive, but more as a statement that in my eyes most of these games are just too much like WOW. I see nothing from my perspective and taking into account the things I personally assign value to in a game that differentiates EQN or TESO or many of the new games from WOW. Some upcoming games do look interesting to me, but they are upcoming and not out. MO is pretty much everything I enjoy in a game and it is here now.
To say MO is "well designed" is about as far from reality as possible. It had a great CONCEPT. Where it fell apart was the actual design and implementation of that concept. The game has been released for over 3 years now. They just released their results for the first half of the year and they lost money AGAIN. They have lost money for something like 10 consecutive quarters. Tens if not over one HUNDRED thousand people have tried the game. All but the tiniest fraction have long since quit. They quit because the game was bad and/or the company behind it was.
They now have a team of 3 employees (including the CEO). To expect dramatic changes and improvements after 3 years is unrealistic. The "Donations" of some folks with cash will enable the game to limp on for an undetermined time but it's chance at market success has long since passed.
I think the fact that this game has struggled so long to simply get LISTED on Greenlight, despite repeated attempts by StarVault to enlist the community to drive traffic, say alot about the future (and past) of the game
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I don't personally see the lack of a huge playerbase or monetary success/failure of the game as any sort of proof on whether or not it is designed well.
I am of the opinion the majority of players that play these games want an extremely easy and accessible experience that requires very little of them. I think many players say they want games to be harder, have exploration, risk/reward -- but when shown what that actually looks like in reality they will not accept it and will go back to something more accessible.
For example, many players want a game with exploration where there can be a sense of not knowing what is around the next corner or what is in the forest they never knew existed. Many claim they want a world in which they can actually get lost. At the same time, take away their ability to push M and get a detailed map of the world complete with GPS tracking of their character and you'll hear claims it is "bad design" to not have a map.
It is this sort of thing MO does that I claim to be good design ideas. They take away a lot of convenience from the game. What many players of these games don't seem to realize is every time a convenience is added, there is a price paid for that convenience and at times that price is fun, excitement, risk, danger, and it is through struggle that we can at times find reward.
Most players want a Utopia, not a game. It is these Utopian games where it is supposed to be fun fun fun from start to end and players never know real loss that have caused boring stale games to rule this genre.
It is with all of this in mind that I say the game is well designed and it is for these same reasons coupled with the bugs, small and slow to respond development team, and balance issues that I feel the game has a small following. I do agree the game design is to blame for the small following, but I disagree the design is a failure.
I do think it unfair though to claim my statement as removed from reality without explaining why that is so. Maybe now that I have explained further why I say this, you will not judge my opinion so harshly.
Games that are well designed keep their intended audience. MO has failed miserably at that.
The one feature you claim as a good design is the lack of a map. Big deal. If you don't want a map in just about every game just don't hit M.
When I say it's design is a failure I mean things like:
A billion craftable items but only a handful are useful
They are now going on their 3rd (4th?) relaunch of territory control. because all the prior ones were poor.
To this day they are just fixing issues related to bank space and node line crossing. They now have the experience to try and address them. When they DESIGNED the functionality they didn't
How about functional AI? It's 3 years after release, they are on "New AI" number 4..5.. 6? And it's horrible.
Those are a few of the poorly designed/implemented items off the top of my head. Again, this is a thread about Mortal Online and it's failure to be listed on Steam after all this time. It may eventually get listed, but other games far, far earlier in development are voted in, while MO which launched over 3 years ago is skipped over. paratus recently said it was listed as #10 on the Steam Greenlight votes. There is a reason it's skipped every month.
It's not popularity, just look at this list of games that have been Greenlit over the last 6 months. They certainly don't have the "194,000" forum members that henrick brags about with MO. So how about you take this opportunity to say why you don't think MO has been Greenit even though far more obscure titles have leapfrogged it.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
The map was an example, i'm not certain you got the full impact of what my actual intended point about it was as your comment about hitting M seems to indicate.
Still, i've never claimed MO is perfect and every single design choice and system the developers have implemented is perfect or working well. I only claimed I feel it is overall a well designed game. You disagree apparently, I guess thats just the way it goes.
I outlined in my post why I feel it does not keep an audience and I don't really feel the need to restate any of it.
As far as why it has not been greenlit, I can't explain that. I'm no subject matter expert on Steam and its policies.
Out of the 10 or so friends i've had try the game, 8 logged in and skinned the pig in the tutorial area and left immediately and haven't gone back. They are playing Neverwinter now. The two that made it past that point are still playing MO and claim it is "an amazing game" and "the game we have always wanted" respectively.
My main point within the thread is that I feel for those 2 people out of a hundred that will enjoy it, I wish Steam would pick it up. So that those few who are into this sort of game will have that exposure to it.
I'm not certain why you made this thread if you have such animosity towards the game or why you are playing it. I was hoping to find here on this subforum at least a couple of other folks who are into this sort of sandbox game that I enjoy.
No, MY point is that you see the lack of an optional feature as some sort of good design. If someone ELSE hit's M to bring up a map it shouldn't make the slightest difference to someone who doesn't want to use such a feature. Maybe you don't even know this but from even BEFORE launch (over 3 years ago) the developers promised that they WOULD have a map but that it would be player created.
Still waiting...
Blown promises like THAT are a key reason that MO is not Greenlit 3 years after it released, while games from unknown small developers leapfrog them.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
This was kind of my whole point. Apparently you along with most other MMORPG players do not consider the absence of the map good game design. I do. I do not feel a game with no map and a game with a map you can choose not to use are equivalent. I'm not going to try to convince you to see it my way though. What is the point?
Maybe you're right about the broken promises keeping it off Steam though.. For all I know Steam has a broken promise tracker that flags games and keeps them out. Stranger things have happened.
MO has too much history as a bad game and too much reputation as a bad game to get into Steam's Greenlight program. Even without the reputation, it's just not that great a game. It's certainly not "Fresh and New". The ideas are pretty cool, but the execution is mediocre at best.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Mediocre is quite generous. If they had just done a halfway decent job of implementing their IDEAS the game would be thriving and not relying on thousands of dollars in donations for basic things like fixing animations.
I still think it might someday get on Steam Greenlight simply because they only count YES votes, and according to Paratus they are in the top 10 in total YES votes. One of these days someone at Steam will let it through. I don't think it will make much of a difference to the game's populaton though.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Look at it this way. My character is supposed to be a 30 year old that has lived in Vadda his whole life. At the game start I do not know the layout of the town. I do not know what surrounds the town? I do not know even in general "Big River 10 minutes walk north"?
That's poor game design.
I start out as a 30 year old unable to jump a 6 inch high stone and I have the stamina of a slug?
That's poor game design.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I disagree it is poor game design.
Rather than call those poor game design, I would call both of those things "unrealistic."
Games do not have to be completely realistic to be designed well. If part of the object of the game is to learn ones way around town having a map of the town would defeat that purpose. Sometimes you have to sacrifice realism in games to achieve a design goal. Many great games have done that. Mario wasn't 100% realistic.
You are sounding like one of the fellows in the game who just doesn't like the fact that there is no map and doesn't understand why many of us do. Maybe the game just isn't your type of game.
No...Its just poorly designed and managed by hacks.
Sorry- Its true. There are a plethora of people (myself included) who love sandbox games. My first MMO (not including neverwinter on AOL) was UO and to this day it was the best and most fulfilling I have ever played . I have been dying for a "3D UO" or even another isometric UO with modern UI and interface, updated graphics, etc.
There is a market (niche it may be-) for a proper "hardcore sandbox mmo"- If MO was even CLOSE to being a working sandbox it would have worked. MO is essentially a PVP arena, very little sand, poor implementation, badly coded, bug filled and managed by snake oil salesmen.
MO COULD have been fixed if Henrik had been replaced as CEO during the first year or so- Its too late now. MO will never be anything but a shoddy mess with a low population- That isnt because of "WOW kiddies" , nor about people not desiring this type of game- Its due to SV as a company and a bad game.
I guess i'll just say whatever game you guys played doesn't sound like the one I play and leave my participation in the thread at that.
99% of the community is just going to run this game into the ground regardless of what anyone says and i'm not going to change that.
I would be more willing to fight the rabid haters but this thread isn't really about that and i'm not going to drag it off topic.
SV ran their own game into the ground, and no- You cannot change that ...
Blaming this community for the failure of MO is a sad misdirection. If it were a good game (and a working sandbox) from a decent company- NOTHING anyone could say (here or elsewhere) would have stopped its success.
On that note- See ya, I guess.
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
http://www.techopedia.com/definition/3952/sandbox
Thats a detailed definition on what Sandbox means. I ll stay on the most important part which is the ability for players to interract with the world and actualy change it. The sanbox aspects of MO are: 1) the ability to build houses and keeps in fixed spots 2) the possibility to break those structures down and 3) the ability to deplete resources and vains with gathering.
Now if a game can be considered a sandbox title because it has those 3 features then again Age of Conan is a sanbox title aswell. MO 3 years after release is a shadow of a game. The world is empty. Theres nothing to explore. The interractions with the enviroment and the world of Nave are simply not there. The AI is a joke. The pvp is simply laughable. Server's stability is equal to the one with a canister of nitroglycerine in the hands of a monkey. Game's lore is uknown to the public due to the fact that is written in "advanced Swedish" that no one can translate to English not even to "regular Swedish". Game's staff are volunteers that playing the game and have guild afiliations, hold grudges and in many occasions that made it to the light and many more that didnt made it, they are affecting the outcome of battles and even wars. The developer(s) of the game is lets politely say a bit unskilled and the game is riddled with bugs. Each patch is supposed to fix bugs but intoduces multiple new and brings back several old ones. And i could go on forever with a neverending list that is walking side by side with MO since the beta times.
If you say its a well designed game, i say its a poorly designed game and unfortunatelly that poor and shallow designed is terribly implemented by people that never had the slightest idea what they wanted to do regarding with their own game. The lack of features (the map for example) cannot be considered "good design" nor harcore. You know what would be considered hardcore? players to create or draw their own map as they progress in the world of Nave, exactly as they advertised at the birth of mo. But like it or not features like that will not make it in game. Ever that is.
Personally i wouldnt mind at all for a miracle to happen and MO make it into Greenlight. Then everyone will see that the game is nothing more than a piece of crap. Now if you believe that Greenlight will bring more income to SV and they will use those sources towards developement, that is not gonna happen either. SV had more than one chances to use incomes towards MO's developement but they blew it up again and again insisting on developing a game with uneducated and unskilled amateurs instead of hiring professionals. Remember the preorders fiasco? What happened to the incomes from the 10ths of thousand of copies that didnt cost them anything? The exact same thing thats happening with the donations: Sinking in a bottomless pit.
If you ask me: does MO desrves to make it through Greenlight, does it have a minimum quality to be in Steam? then the answer is certainly not. From the other hand though i would love to see what will happen if it does. Highly doubt it will though. Cheers.
Pretty much this. MO's failures have nothing to do with the players not being able to handle its supposed hardcoreness.
There were plenty of people around at the game's launch who greatly desired a proper sandbox games with complexity, depth, and challenging gameplay. I know, because I was one of them. I once had really high hopes for MO and I gave it more than a year to improve becaue I sincerely hoped that it could become a truly great game.
Sadly, SV did not deliver. They had the attention of an entire niche audience (there was a time when this forum was among the most frequently updated ones on this site, full of drama, forum PvP, rumours and scandals) but they blew their chance due to incompetence, lies, delays and plain screw-ups. Now the ship has long since sailed and 99% of the target audience don't give a crap about it anymore.
MO will probably just limp along for a while, as long as Henrik's dad pays the bills and some rich fools keep throwing their money at SV. Then it will fade into oblivion and hardly no one will care or even notice.
I started playing Mortal Online just over a month ago. It is so refreshing to see something different to the run of the mill theme park games which are in abundance. I've sunk many hours into this game now and still thoroughly enjoying it. Many of the bugs have been sorted out and any that still exist have not hindered my gaming experience at all.
Of the 9 friends who joined me, 5 have not only stayed with the game they are now paying for the subscription. I too have started paying a monthly subscription and feel it is totally worth paying for. I haven't enjoyed an MMO this much in years.
I can see that this game would not appeal to everyone but I feel that the game is not getting the visibility so that people who would enjoy it get the chance to.
I only stumbled across the game through a forum of another game and if I had read most of the Mortal Online forum posts on MMO sites, they are so negative I probably would not have even tried it.
I'd suggest to anyone who wants to try something different to give this game a go. It has a permanent free trial which will show new players enough of the game to determine if they want to keep playing.