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Sign's of Financial Distress or C-Store Bug?

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  • championsFanchampionsFan Member Posts: 419

    Originally posted by Loke666

    Not even a master dev could have saved it and Cryptic have no one like that, Roper is probably their best guy and he is average.

    The engine that runs both CO and STO was created from scratch in 2 years.  Due to contract stipulations, Cryptic was not allowed to re-use any engine code from CoX or the cancelled Marvel Universe project.  

    No matter how bad you think the Cryptic engine is (in my opinion the only engine that is more technologically impressive is EVE's), that is a very fast time to program an MMO engine, by any standard.   Only a handful of companies have ever written any kind of MMO engine, and the lead programmer at Cryptic has written between 2 and 3 (because we don't know how finished Marvel Universe was, although there were in-game videos).  His name is Bruce Rogers, here is his company bio:

    "As a sophomore at the University of California at Davis, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and electrical engineering, Bruce Rogers was already on contract writing games in assembly language. At Atari Games, Bruce led programming teams to deliver products such as the original, coin-op version of Mace: The Dark Age® and War: Final Assault®. Bruce also completed ports of Mace to the PC and War to the Dreamcast in a matter of weeks through his individual efforts. Since joining Cryptic, Bruce designed and refined the engine that powers City of Heroes and City of Villains. He continues to refine Cryptic's proprietary game engine, train new programmers and improve the internal tool chain that helps make Cryptic a leading developer."

    In my research the only other MMO developed in 2 years was DAoC, 10 years ago.  You can criticize Cryptic for choosing a short development cycle, but you can't criticize them for how much they accomplished in that short time.   Perhaps the management chose a bad strategy to rush the games, but no other development team has accomplished more in a shorter time frame.  

    Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.

  • Die_ScreamDie_Scream Member Posts: 1,785

    Originally posted by championsFan

    Originally posted by Loke666

    Not even a master dev could have saved it and Cryptic have no one like that, Roper is probably their best guy and he is average.

    The engine that runs both CO and STO was created from scratch in 2 years.  Due to contract stipulations, Cryptic was not allowed to re-use any engine code from CoX or the cancelled Marvel Universe project.  

    No matter how bad you think the Cryptic engine is (in my opinion the only engine that is more technologically impressive is EVE's), that is a very fast time to program an MMO engine, by any standard.   Only a handful of companies have ever written any kind of MMO engine, and the lead programmer at Cryptic has written between 2 and 3 (because we don't know how finished Marvel Universe was, although there were in-game videos).  His name is Bruce Rogers, here is his company bio:

    "As a sophomore at the University of California at Davis, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and electrical engineering, Bruce Rogers was already on contract writing games in assembly language. At Atari Games, Bruce led programming teams to deliver products such as the original, coin-op version of Mace: The Dark Age® and War: Final Assault®. Bruce also completed ports of Mace to the PC and War to the Dreamcast in a matter of weeks through his individual efforts. Since joining Cryptic, Bruce designed and refined the engine that powers City of Heroes and City of Villains. He continues to refine Cryptic's proprietary game engine, train new programmers and improve the internal tool chain that helps make Cryptic a leading developer."

    In my research the only other MMO developed in 2 years was DAoC, 10 years ago.  You can criticize Cryptic for choosing a short development cycle, but you can't criticize them for how much they accomplished in that short time.   Perhaps the management chose a bad strategy to rush the games, but no other development team has accomplished more in a shorter time frame.  

    If what you say is true, then the engine is an impressive project to complete in under two years.

    Problem is, it's not a good engine for an MMO. I believe I read you say you hadn't played STO? Well CO is better IMO. I don't like CO as you may know.

    CO doesn't have constant load screens and the instancing is less intrusive in that game to the MMO feeling. STO feels like moving from one box to another, each with a tiny cap of players, who you may never run into again.

  • DinendaeDinendae Member Posts: 1,264

    Originally posted by championsFan

    Originally posted by Loke666

    Not even a master dev could have saved it and Cryptic have no one like that, Roper is probably their best guy and he is average.

    The engine that runs both CO and STO was created from scratch in 2 years.  Due to contract stipulations, Cryptic was not allowed to re-use any engine code from CoX or the cancelled Marvel Universe project.  

    No matter how bad you think the Cryptic engine is (in my opinion the only engine that is more technologically impressive is EVE's), that is a very fast time to program an MMO engine, by any standard.   Only a handful of companies have ever written any kind of MMO engine, and the lead programmer at Cryptic has written between 2 and 3 (because we don't know how finished Marvel Universe was, although there were in-game videos).  His name is Bruce Rogers, here is his company bio:

    "As a sophomore at the University of California at Davis, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and electrical engineering, Bruce Rogers was already on contract writing games in assembly language. At Atari Games, Bruce led programming teams to deliver products such as the original, coin-op version of Mace: The Dark Age® and War: Final Assault®. Bruce also completed ports of Mace to the PC and War to the Dreamcast in a matter of weeks through his individual efforts. Since joining Cryptic, Bruce designed and refined the engine that powers City of Heroes and City of Villains. He continues to refine Cryptic's proprietary game engine, train new programmers and improve the internal tool chain that helps make Cryptic a leading developer."

    In my research the only other MMO developed in 2 years was DAoC.  You can criticize Cryptic for choosing a short development cycle, but you can't criticize them for how much they accomplished in that short time.   Perhaps the management chose a bad strategy to rush the games, but no other development team has accomplished more in a shorter time frame.  

     DAoC was in development for three years, not two, which is about the same amount of time that CO was in development. As anyone who played both games can attest to, DAoC accomplished far more in their three years than Cryptic was able to do in their three. Plus, Mythic was actually able to bring some innovation to the table with features that had not been seen before (RvR being chief among them).

    Additionally Cryptic hasn't actually accomplished much like you claim, which is half the problem they have had with customer retention; the game was severely lacking on all fronts, with an entire faction being merely a tacked-on shell. I have seen you state before that Cryptic had to throw everything away when the Marvel deal went South, but do you have any actual proof of that? You know, something credible such as an interview on this website or one like it where that was mentioned when the deal fell through?

    No other develpoment team has "accomplished more in a shorter time" because no other development team has been so foolish as to try to develop two MMOs at the same time (well not quite, while there was overlapping of development time CO and STO were not developed completely in parallel). They also haven't been so foolish as to try putting out a AAA MMO in two years.

    "Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan

  • DinendaeDinendae Member Posts: 1,264

    Originally posted by Die_Scream

     

    If what you say is true, then the engine is an impressive project to complete in under two years.

     I'm not buying his timeline; everything I saw Cryptic saying when they were working on CO implied that they were using the same engine they had developed for the Marvel MMO. Sure they would have had to toss all the art assets and such out, as they were proprietary to Marvel, but the engine itself was not owned by Marvel. All Cryptic had to do was take that engine, prehaps tweak it a bit now that three companies weren't all demanding different things, and then start adding in artwork and the other such 'meat' of the MMO. That gave them three years to work on content for CO, which is why it is a more completed game. Granted CO was still lacking in content at launch, but nowhere near as badly as STO was which had just two years of development time.

    "Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan

  • Die_ScreamDie_Scream Member Posts: 1,785

    Originally posted by Dinendae

    Originally posted by Die_Scream

     

    If what you say is true, then the engine is an impressive project to complete in under two years.

     I'm not buying his timeline; everything I saw Cryptic saying when they were working on CO implied that they were using the same engine they had developed for the Marvel MMO. Sure they would have had to toss all the art assets and such out, as they were proprietary to Marvel, but the engine itself was not owned by Marvel. All Cryptic had to do was take that engine, prehaps tweak it a bit now that three companies weren't all demanding different things, and then start adding in artwork and the other such 'meat' of the MMO. That gave them three years to work on content for CO, which is why it is a more completed game. Granted CO was still lacking in content at launch, but nowhere near as badly as STO was which had just two years of development time.

    I don't know, even in your scenario. it's still a pretty good result, it's a good engine, for a cooperative online game, similar to Titan Quest or Diablo, like SP with opt in MP.

    It's too simplistic and *cheap* for a true MMO. I cry to hear they are skinning this for a NWN MMO next. I love DnD, now Cryptic will take that too. *sob* Star Trek was painful enough, but to soil Neverwinter Nights? This studio? image

    I hope it's not true.

  • raistalin69raistalin69 Member Posts: 575

    keep your fingers crossed, maybe cryptic will go out of business first.

    personally i love dnd too and this is probably the best case scenario. i played turbines ddo and enjoyed it for a while, but ran out of content and moved on. it would be awesome to see a good studio develope a dnd sandbox game ( of course good studio excludes cryptic)

    IF THE ONLY DEFENCE FOR CRITICISM OF A GAME IS CALLING SOMEONE A TROLL OR HATER, THAT SAYS A LOT ABOUT THE QUALITY OF THE GAME

  • PermianPermian Member CommonPosts: 78

    Originally posted by Felconian

    Originally posted by Permian


    Originally posted by bstiff

    Is the captain's log thing even working now? If I pull my chars log, all I get is "no entries found" in the logeven though there wer some there a couple days ago.

    It's showing no log entries in captains log for any of my three characters. Same story going to the last page of the captains table and picking a character at random - it has no captains log entries either. Looks like it's disabled.

    I'm guessing someone was fetching all the logs to scan dates of the last entry.

    Cryptic does it again.... they change the goal post's .....Why? ..you would think they have somthing to hide!

    Captains logs have returned ...

    http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?p=2592563

  • Xondar123Xondar123 Member CommonPosts: 2,543

    Originally posted by championsFan

    Originally posted by Loke666

    Not even a master dev could have saved it and Cryptic have no one like that, Roper is probably their best guy and he is average.

    The engine that runs both CO and STO was created from scratch in 2 years.  Due to contract stipulations, Cryptic was not allowed to re-use any engine code from CoX or the cancelled Marvel Universe project.  

    No matter how bad you think the Cryptic engine is (in my opinion the only engine that is more technologically impressive is EVE's), that is a very fast time to program an MMO engine, by any standard.   Only a handful of companies have ever written any kind of MMO engine, and the lead programmer at Cryptic has written between 2 and 3 (because we don't know how finished Marvel Universe was, although there were in-game videos).  His name is Bruce Rogers, here is his company bio:

    "As a sophomore at the University of California at Davis, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and electrical engineering, Bruce Rogers was already on contract writing games in assembly language. At Atari Games, Bruce led programming teams to deliver products such as the original, coin-op version of Mace: The Dark Age® and War: Final Assault®. Bruce also completed ports of Mace to the PC and War to the Dreamcast in a matter of weeks through his individual efforts. Since joining Cryptic, Bruce designed and refined the engine that powers City of Heroes and City of Villains. He continues to refine Cryptic's proprietary game engine, train new programmers and improve the internal tool chain that helps make Cryptic a leading developer."

    In my research the only other MMO developed in 2 years was DAoC, 10 years ago.  You can criticize Cryptic for choosing a short development cycle, but you can't criticize them for how much they accomplished in that short time.   Perhaps the management chose a bad strategy to rush the games, but no other development team has accomplished more in a shorter time frame.  

    It sounds plausible that Cryptic sold the CoH engine to NCSoft, but it doesn't make a tiny bit of sense that they would have to toss out the engine being developed for MUO. The game engine controls the mechanics and core of the game, and unless Marvel printed the code that they used in the game engine in an issue of Spider-Man, then there is no way Marvel would have any rights to the proprietary engine Cryptic developed in-house.

    This is one reason why STO had nothing but art assets and game concepts when Cryptic took over the licence from Perpetual: Because Perpetual was planning on using the Gods and Heroes engine that they developed themselves in-house for their version of STO. Cryptic had no right to use anything related to any of Perpetual's other projects except what concerned Star Trek, engine included.

    I seriously doubt that Marvel could take away Cryptic's engine or any of their back end programming. Considering Cryptic probably started work on the MU MMO soon after NCSoft won the lawsuit Marvel filed against them, that means MU started development, probably including the engine, sometime in 2006.

  • Xondar123Xondar123 Member CommonPosts: 2,543

    Originally posted by Permian

    Originally posted by Felconian


    Originally posted by Permian


    Originally posted by bstiff

    Is the captain's log thing even working now? If I pull my chars log, all I get is "no entries found" in the logeven though there wer some there a couple days ago.

    It's showing no log entries in captains log for any of my three characters. Same story going to the last page of the captains table and picking a character at random - it has no captains log entries either. Looks like it's disabled.

    I'm guessing someone was fetching all the logs to scan dates of the last entry.

    Cryptic does it again.... they change the goal post's .....Why? ..you would think they have somthing to hide!

    Captains logs have returned ...

    http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?p=2592563

    Quick! Someone write some scripts to datamine the Captain's Database so we can see how many accounts have been active in the past 30 days!

  • DinendaeDinendae Member Posts: 1,264

    Originally posted by Die_Scream

     

    I don't know, even in your scenario. it's still a pretty good result, it's a good engine, for a cooperative online game, similar to Titan Quest or Diablo, like SP with opt in MP.

    It's too simplistic and *cheap* for a true MMO. I cry to hear they are skinning this for a NWN MMO next. I love DnD, now Cryptic will take that too. *sob* Star Trek was painful enough, but to soil Neverwinter Nights? This studio? image

    I hope it's not true.

     The engine is decent enough for a superhero game, whether single player, MMO, or something in between. It was not so good for a SciFi MMO, and I believe it would be an absolute disaster if they used it for a NWN MMO (especially if they kept using the D20/3.5 system). Never fear though! Hasbro/WotC are suing to yank the franchise away from Atari and since comments made by Atari in their last financial statements confirm what Hasbro was saying (and counter Atari's claims), I am guessing that Hasbro's lawsuit will be successful unless Atari offers one heck of a sweet settlement to Hasbro.

    If that happens then I will indeed weep for any Forgotten Realms MMO made by Cryptic, as their shove it out the door model of game development would make any such NWN MMO an absolute tragedy.

    "Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan

  • mezlabormezlabor Member Posts: 133

    Originally posted by Dinendae

    Originally posted by Die_Scream

     

    I don't know, even in your scenario. it's still a pretty good result, it's a good engine, for a cooperative online game, similar to Titan Quest or Diablo, like SP with opt in MP.

    It's too simplistic and *cheap* for a true MMO. I cry to hear they are skinning this for a NWN MMO next. I love DnD, now Cryptic will take that too. *sob* Star Trek was painful enough, but to soil Neverwinter Nights? This studio? image

    I hope it's not true.

     The engine is decent enough for a superhero game, whether single player, MMO, or something in between. It was not so good for a SciFi MMO, and I believe it would be an absolute disaster if they used it for a NWN MMO (especially if they kept using the D20/3.5 system). Never fear though! Hasbro/WotC are suing to yank the franchise away from Atari and since comments made by Atari in their last financial statements confirm what Hasbro was saying (and counter Atari's claims), I am guessing that Hasbro's lawsuit will be successful unless Atari offers one heck of a sweet settlement to Hasbro.

    If that happens then I will indeed weep for any Forgotten Realms MMO made by Cryptic, as their shove it out the door model of game development would make any such NWN MMO an absolute tragedy.

    Lucky for us I think it's a pretty clear cut case of conflict of interest. I'm not a lawyer but Atari did sell off their entire european publishing arm to Namco/Bandai who are in direct competition with Hasbro. Unless Atari agreed to restructure their entire european publishing agreement to handle only DnD they don't have a real case here. I don't think its likely they can do that tho without getting sued in turn by Namco/Bandai for breech of contract.

  • Vagrant_ZeroVagrant_Zero Member Posts: 1,190


    Originally posted by Xondar123


    Originally posted by Sevenwind
    Don't think Funcom provides phone supprt. Those forums are not lit up with rage rage rage over it.
    And who knows the tone of the email sent. If you're an ass don't expect much help.
    Also there is other means of getting help if the customer service rep was no help. They could send a PM to one of the admins on the board or posted in the PC and Technical Issues forum. No they would rather vent which I don't think helped their case.
    Even twitter is useful. I've sent tweets to stormy about server lag and mobs acting up. He checked and they restarted some zones.

    Funcom is a European company. They may do business in the States, but there is no guarentee they have any sort of presence in the States in the form of offices.

    http://www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&func_id=1005&table=PUBLISH&item=1005

    They have physical offices in Durham, North Carolina. They are subject to US laws on the matter.


    Originally posted by Xondar123

    Originally posted by championsFan

    Originally posted by Loke666
    Not even a master dev could have saved it and Cryptic have no one like that, Roper is probably their best guy and he is average.
    The engine that runs both CO and STO was created from scratch in 2 years.  Due to contract stipulations, Cryptic was not allowed to re-use any engine code from CoX or the cancelled Marvel Universe project.  
    No matter how bad you think the Cryptic engine is (in my opinion the only engine that is more technologically impressive is EVE's), that is a very fast time to program an MMO engine, by any standard.   Only a handful of companies have ever written any kind of MMO engine, and the lead programmer at Cryptic has written between 2 and 3 (because we don't know how finished Marvel Universe was, although there were in-game videos).  His name is Bruce Rogers, here is his company bio:
    "As a sophomore at the University of California at Davis, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and electrical engineering, Bruce Rogers was already on contract writing games in assembly language. At Atari Games, Bruce led programming teams to deliver products such as the original, coin-op version of Mace: The Dark Age® and War: Final Assault®. Bruce also completed ports of Mace to the PC and War to the Dreamcast in a matter of weeks through his individual efforts. Since joining Cryptic, Bruce designed and refined the engine that powers City of Heroes and City of Villains. He continues to refine Cryptic's proprietary game engine, train new programmers and improve the internal tool chain that helps make Cryptic a leading developer."
    In my research the only other MMO developed in 2 years was DAoC, 10 years ago.  You can criticize Cryptic for choosing a short development cycle, but you can't criticize them for how much they accomplished in that short time.   Perhaps the management chose a bad strategy to rush the games, but no other development team has accomplished more in a shorter time frame.  


    It sounds plausible that Cryptic sold the CoH engine to NCSoft, but it doesn't make a tiny bit of sense that they would have to toss out the engine being developed for MUO. The game engine controls the mechanics and core of the game, and unless Marvel printed the code that they used in the game engine in an issue of Spider-Man, then there is no way Marvel would have any rights to the proprietary engine Cryptic developed in-house.
    This is one reason why STO had nothing but art assets and game concepts when Cryptic took over the licence from Perpetual: Because Perpetual was planning on using the Gods and Heroes engine that they developed themselves in-house for their version of STO. Cryptic had no right to use anything related to any of Perpetual's other projects except what concerned Star Trek, engine included.
    I seriously doubt that Marvel could take away Cryptic's engine or any of their back end programming. Considering Cryptic probably started work on the MU MMO soon after NCSoft won the lawsuit Marvel filed against them, that means MU started development, probably including the engine, sometime in 2006.

    You are correct here. Champions Online is built off the work originaly created for Marvel Universe Online. Marvel never retained any rights to the engine itself, only the art assets.

  • DinendaeDinendae Member Posts: 1,264

    Originally posted by mezlabor

     

    Lucky for us I think it's a pretty clear cut case of conflict of interest. I'm not a lawyer but Atari did sell off their entire european publishing arm to Namco/Bandai who are in direct competition with Hasbro. Unless Atari agreed to restructure their entire european publishing agreement to handle only DnD they don't have a real case here. I don't think its likely they can do that tho without getting sued in turn by Namco/Bandai for breech of contract.

     Additionally, if you look at Atari's financial statements, there are comments in there about Hasbro trying to negotiate in good faith with Atari to settle the matter (something Atari denied in their official statement). There are also comments about them working on a D&D/AD&D based MMO (NWN, more than likely) in those statements, which lines up with what Turbine claims in its lawsuit. Interestingly, there was mention of two other lawsuits; one dealing with someone who worked for them on a game who claims he wasn't correctly compensated for his work, and another from a German distributor which basically claims that Atari agreed to to promote a game the Germany company was going to distribute and screwed the germans over on the deal (sounds mighty similar to the Turbine lawsuit). If all four of those lawsuits go against Atari then they are going to be in a world of hurt (moreso than they are already) and I could see the underachieving Cryptic branch of Atari getting axed first (or at least mangled to the point that continued development will be even more at a snail's pace than it is already).

    "Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan

  • FraxtureFraxture Member UncommonPosts: 121

    Originally posted by Dinendae

    Originally posted by mezlabor

     

    Lucky for us I think it's a pretty clear cut case of conflict of interest. I'm not a lawyer but Atari did sell off their entire european publishing arm to Namco/Bandai who are in direct competition with Hasbro. Unless Atari agreed to restructure their entire european publishing agreement to handle only DnD they don't have a real case here. I don't think its likely they can do that tho without getting sued in turn by Namco/Bandai for breech of contract.

     Additionally, if you look at Atari's financial statements, there are comments in there about Hasbro trying to negotiate in good faith with Atari to settle the matter (something Atari denied in their official statement). There are also comments about them working on a D&D/AD&D based MMO (NWN, more than likely) in those statements, which lines up with what Turbine claims in its lawsuit. Interestingly, there was mention of two other lawsuits; one dealing with someone who worked for them on a game who claims he wasn't correctly compensated for his work, and another from a German distributor which basically claims that Atari agreed to to promote a game the Germany company was going to distribute and screwed the germans over on the deal (sounds mighty similar to the Turbine lawsuit). If all four of those lawsuits go against Atari then they are going to be in a world of hurt (moreso than they are already) and I could see the underachieving Cryptic branch of Atari getting axed first (or at least mangled to the point that continued development will be even more at a snail's pace than it is already).

     IMO, Cryptic/Atari runs their business like the mob. Basically nothing but a long string of scams.

    They are done, nothing can save them now. Reputation is everything, and once you loose that. It's time to vanish into the caves to never be seen again..

    image
  • jotulljotull Member Posts: 256

    Originally posted by Permian

    Originally posted by bstiff

    Just on that subject I draw your attention to EVE Online.

    AFAIK CCP never had a telephone number for customers to call it was always done through petitions online. CCP does have an office in the USA so if there was a law then I presume CCP would have had to follow it? Unless of course, CCP has a secret bat phone telephone number just for USA customers to call that I don't know about. xD

    Dunno what effect withdrawing telephone support has for STO in terms of breaking the deal.


    Shhhhhhh you will derail the hate machine with logic.


    Never mind that most companies (including Blizzard in the near future) are switching from phone support to Parature, as it is a more efficient way to handle Customer service request and guarantees there is a paper trail, and customers no longer have to spend a lot of valuable time in queues. No I’m not a lifer, nor a fanboi…the mindless hate on STO and Cryptic is just stupid.

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