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The Workshop Show #42
Nanfoodle
Member LegendaryPosts: 10,617
http://www.twitch.tv/everquestnext/v/7165086
Have not watched it yet so I cant give you any heads up. Will watch it Friday lol Enjoy =-)
Comments
While I don't really mind the stylized cartoon art direction, the lack of detail or variation does make it less appealing to me.
I'd hope with time spent on lighting, adding NPCs, other players, audio, etc that it would see a bit more lively, but as is, just way too fabricated (as it is of course).
Been my issue with EQN all along. While I don't mind the art style so much, the level of plastic-flawless-photoshop-Disney layers they have is a bit much. Not a ton of variation or detail to make it seem more natural and a live.
Then again the demos from the reveal in 2013 were decent and the engine/tools have improved a lot so maybe things will look better in the actual finished product that isn't slapped together from a bunch of player creations with what they say didn't take long. Even if it is all player created and placed by devs, they could go in and clean/dirty it up a bit to make things not so perfect and brand new looking.
Overall I just hope that Voxels end up being worth all the hassle and compromises they most likely had to make. Causing little craters in the ground during combat and digging to find dungeons isn't worth the costs.
So I'm watching the video, and all I see is a generic little city with no substance or soul. Then 10 minutes later, OK back to Landmark till the end of the stream. I thought this was supposed to be an Everquest Next stream. This game is never coming out, if all they have to show us is a crappy little city, put together with player made Landmark assets.
And Rosie is just commenting on how everything is so great and so beautiful. Well, I didn't see it. I've seen better stuff built in Minecraft for goodness sake.
Just stop , it's getting embarrassing. Seriously.
I personally like the "little Qeynos" presentation. They could have spent more days to do NPCs, polishing and props passes to make the place more lively, but it wasn't the point of it.
It's an environment creation pipeline test to see how fast they can slap player made templates together to get a planned city design. Seems like they are quite happy with the end results and how fast they can work. In other games, those tests usually have no textures and half the models (or more) are missing (Pillars of Eternity have some example in their Kickstarter updates).
I also appear to be one of the few person who like the Takish stuff. Very striking, but totally fitting with the Empire and its members (I do read the novels).
When the video started i was like ,ya ya a test map but still looks horrible but then they clicked on the lighting and looked a bit better.
The problem i have is this is PLAYER WORK NOT theirs,they are suppose to have a TEAM working on this game.What is the team doing all this time?This is nothing more than showing Landmark creations,this is not EQNEXT.
The realism i guess is this is what we can expect,they are now an Indie team trying to build a Triple A game and it won't happen.IMO their whole sales ,marketing idea was to include player work to entice players to stick around.
Their budget and overhead for this game must be super small,no way i see even 20 million going into this game and that would just be years of wages and licenses and leasing their building space as well as hiring lawyers.
The word NEXT sort of implies,next generation,they are actually taking a step backwards.I know players can create nicer structures than most graphic artists because i have seen it for many years,players have passion for their game and work,developers just have budgets and money to count.I really feel sad for the once proud franchise,i feel it is all downhill from here.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I understand this, but the perfectness of it still doesn't appeal to my eyes.
Probably has a lot to do with the lighting and lack of filler. The start when it was night looked much better.
When they shine the light on it and everything is very clear, just pops too much as nothing is really that perfect looking. A city 20-30 years old isn't going to be spotless (except maybe with magic...).
I liked the environments from the 2 SOE Live demos so I attribute it to being what it is, a piece together empty "city" that isn't finished or heavily worked on.
Then again, I've never found cities in games to look that good. Very unnatural looking with everything in the right place and the typical setup.
While I don't want them to make it more realistic or mature, I do hope there is more variation and detail overall. I wouldn't want to spend any time in that city if I didn't have to.
Very curious if that is what the actual cities will look like as in how close everything is together and what not. Not sure how they would fit in a lot of "living" NPCs with the special sauce AI along with players doing their thing.
Using none trinity combat makes sense since Everquest never became famous for copying everyone else. While EQ surely was inspired of Meridian 59 it took MMOs to a new level and I don't think any ohter game including Wow changed the genre more.
Just remaking EQ with modern graphics would not do the original game justice.
That doesn't mean EQNs combat system will be great, I have no clue if they can make it fun or if it just will be a worse version of TERAs but thinking outside the box is what got Everquest started. And a new EQ too similar to the first game would bomb pretty hard.
I do agree though that the style of the buildings seems too cartoony, Norrath still need to feel like Norrath no matter how new mechanics the game have, otherwise they should have set the game in a new IP instead.
The lack of detail is not a biggie to me, the voxel engine do have it's costs and the potential of that is worth less details as long as they at least put enough work on the character models.
The real important things is firstly that the game is fun, secondly that it doesn't feel like we already played it for years and thirdly that we still recognize world.
If SOE can manage that the game will do rather good, but in that case they will need to make at least half the world grittier than this.
Well, the city is pretty barebone, add some dirt and trash lying around. Fix the lightning, maybe add some smoke from fires (something a town like this should have plenty of), maybe a little fog and rain and that part would look better.
But they clearly have a lot more work to do if this should feel like a real populated city not built yesterday.
How can this be EQ Next when their game window says Landmark? So they are basically just using an internal build of Landmark - Throwing some basic things together - Then claiming that it is a city in EQN. Yeah. Yeah. " They are the same " or " LM is being used to build EQN " etc. Unless they are planning to turn Landmark into EQN or can import large builds easily into EQN then these videos are meaningless and pointless. Both of which I doubt are true.
It has been close to 2 years and they still cant even use an EQN client to show off any progress during these videos.
As I don't really care "where" they build the game as long as it eventually is a game, the more concerning thing for me is optimization and if there will be major improvements.
If that exact same build was in Landmark, I'm assuming many would have a tough time navigating it as is or once filled with life. If they can't figure out a way to make it playable for a decent variety of machines, will have another EQ2 on their hands.
Also assuming the slight stuttering and what not is a streaming/recording issue and not actually happening. That would be bad for what is likely an empty internal server.
I think it looked pretty good, but there is still that washed out look to everything especially at night.
I also still can't understand why they didn't make a "creative mode" for Landmark, especially considering they are drawing on community work like this. It just seems like a bizarre decision. There were likely plenty of great artists who would have loved to make assets for EQN, but who weren't interested in grinding for materials and so forth to make stuff.
They have been turning the game into "builders only club" over and over again to the point other type of players have left it actually. For example, since the last wipe (May), tier one build materials are free (all stone, dirts, snow and ices, basically the most used stuff) and the rest is a lot cheaper to use and you don't have to grind anything for the upkeep.
Now though, the builders are pissed off that they are working on EQNext instead of Landmark.
Think of Landmark as the garage and EQN is the car being worked on in the garage. They took what they have for EQN and made a building game from that by adding dev tools and we have Landmark. The same base parts of Landmark are taken from EQN, they just added to the dev tools to it so players can build.
Lol. Not even much I can say other than I'm baffled by this display of a lack of critical thinking/analyses.
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It's obvious the devs were banking on Landmark being the next-gen Minecraft and attracting a large base of players to help subsidize and fund EQN. Considering Landmark is already irrelevant before it's even released yet should lead any sensible person to conclude the development of EQN is in serious jeopardy.
No. EQL (and EQN) were conceived before Minecraft was launched. (The money side is a different matter.)
EQN was to be the "new EQ". And EQL was to be the key to answering the question "How can we produce enough new content (for EQN) to satisfy players' demands?" Answer: get players to produce it ...... which means giving players the tools (EQL) .... and an incentive - the market. And for it to work SoE would have to be able to port stuff made in EQL into EQN - so same tool set basically.
Then
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