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Camelot Unchained - Necessary Disclosure Agreement - MMORPG.com

SBFordSBFord Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
edited February 2017 in News & Features Discussion

imageCamelot Unchained - Necessary Disclosure Agreement - MMORPG.com

This week Tim Eisen talks about Non-Disclosure Agreements aka NDA’s, why they exist and if they are still necessary in the pay to test era.

Read the full story here



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Comments

  • LeiloniLeiloni Member RarePosts: 1,266
    edited February 2017
    I think NDA's are a good idea for a company with a developing game, at least up to a certain point. Removing an NDA can help with hype - as you said, it's free marketing. But a game needs to be in a good enough state and far enough in development to actually be something worth showing off.

    Players have discerning tastes these days due to the sheer volume of games being thrown at us, so you can't throw a half finished unpolished product at us and expect a lot of positive results. The best response you can get by throwing a game out too early is for some people to say "Oh that looks promising, I'll look back in a few months." But in a few months they may have forgotten, may be having too much fun in another game to leave it to play yours, or maybe another new release was announced that they've decided is much cooler than yours. Timing is everything.
  • KyleranKyleran Member LegendaryPosts: 43,373

    Spaced76 said:

    Same old Same old crap game company. PLEDGE NOW we only made 5 million dollar and yet the game is still not released . With that much money it should be Free to play!! and take you left over 4 million and live well . Maybe give free subs with your 4 mill extra. Next thing you know the game get cancelled and nobody get there money back . Kinda Like repopuation , albion online , star citizen. list go on on my friend . make it stop. Pledgeing is bad mmmk



    You appear to have no clue as to how much games cost to make, especially if using western based resources.

    I remain unconvinced any quality MMORPG can be delivered for much less than $20M, but as this title is a partial it has a chance.

    As to NDAs, I am a backer and honor mine. No real advantage from a developers point of view to drop it.

    "True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde 

    "I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant

    Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm

    Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

    Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™

    "This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon






  • JamesGoblinJamesGoblin Member RarePosts: 1,242
    Kyleran said:

    Spaced76 said:

    Same old Same old crap game company. PLEDGE NOW we only made 5 million dollar and yet the game is still not released . With that much money it should be Free to play!! and take you left over 4 million and live well . Maybe give free subs with your 4 mill extra. Next thing you know the game get cancelled and nobody get there money back . Kinda Like repopuation , albion online , star citizen. list go on on my friend . make it stop. Pledgeing is bad mmmk


    <snip>

    I remain unconvinced any quality MMORPG can be delivered for much less than $20M, but as this title is a partial it has a chance.

    <snippety snip>
    To add to that, CU current total should be ~$9M and that's before eventual overseas licensing, additional investments, (open) beta hype etc.

    I doubt they'll reach $20M, but IMO a sandbox aware of it's niche and well focused has good chances of delivering even with less.
     
     W...aaagh?
  • PurplePoloPlayerPurplePoloPlayer Member UncommonPosts: 145
    An NDA is completely appropriate at the 'true alpha' stage of development. While an NDA can't keep information completely private it's important to guard the current progress for the time being.

    Potential customers have a very short attention span and for many, viewing the game in its current status would be detrimental. As the game approaches 'true beta' it will have an excellent level of polish and should be appropriate to offer without an NDA.

    Bottom line. Many consumers have little patience and will only give a product one chance. CU deserves to be presented in the best light possible.

    Mark Jacobs and his team are doing an excellent job so far. He's put in extra of his own money to open a Seattle production office so he could hire the talent they need to get to beta. He has been completely open with backers with the development progress and he has my full trust. They've designed the engine from scratch and the game is being made the right way. Because of this City State Entertainment hasn't had a lot of bells and whistles to show off yet. I think once CU hits beta people are going to be delighted and shocked with the results.
    Check out my stream at www.twitch.tv/purplepoloplayer!
  • KyleranKyleran Member LegendaryPosts: 43,373
    Kyleran said:

    Spaced76 said:

    Same old Same old crap game company. PLEDGE NOW we only made 5 million dollar and yet the game is still not released . With that much money it should be Free to play!! and take you left over 4 million and live well . Maybe give free subs with your 4 mill extra. Next thing you know the game get cancelled and nobody get there money back . Kinda Like repopuation , albion online , star citizen. list go on on my friend . make it stop. Pledgeing is bad mmmk


    <snip>

    I remain unconvinced any quality MMORPG can be delivered for much less than $20M, but as this title is a partial it has a chance.

    <snippety snip>
    To add to that, CU current total should be ~$9M and that's before eventual overseas licensing, additional investments, (open) beta hype etc.

    I doubt they'll reach $20M, but IMO a sandbox aware of it's niche and well focused has good chances of delivering even with less.
     
    Maybe.  Interesting parallel, Conan Exiles just did an EA release and reportedly has cost $ 7M to make thus far.

    I would consider to be a focused niche title however seems supporting more than 40 players is a challenge.  

    This game is shooting for far more which increases the dev cost, how much I don't know.

    "True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde 

    "I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant

    Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm

    Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

    Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™

    "This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon






  • JamesGoblinJamesGoblin Member RarePosts: 1,242
    Kyleran said:
    Kyleran said:

    Spaced76 said:

    Same old Same old crap game company. PLEDGE NOW we only made 5 million dollar and yet the game is still not released . With that much money it should be Free to play!! and take you left over 4 million and live well . Maybe give free subs with your 4 mill extra. Next thing you know the game get cancelled and nobody get there money back . Kinda Like repopuation , albion online , star citizen. list go on on my friend . make it stop. Pledgeing is bad mmmk


    <snip>

    I remain unconvinced any quality MMORPG can be delivered for much less than $20M, but as this title is a partial it has a chance.

    <snippety snip>
    To add to that, CU current total should be ~$9M and that's before eventual overseas licensing, additional investments, (open) beta hype etc.

    I doubt they'll reach $20M, but IMO a sandbox aware of it's niche and well focused has good chances of delivering even with less.
     
    Maybe.  Interesting parallel, Conan Exiles just did an EA release and reportedly has cost $ 7M to make thus far.

    I would consider to be a focused niche title however seems supporting more than 40 players is a challenge.  

    This game is shooting for far more which increases the dev cost, how much I don't know.
    Last time I checked CU was aiming for 5k concurrent player servers (but I have no forum access, so this might be dated). They more-less already built the engine able to support that, game problems are elsewhere.
     W...aaagh?
  • francis_baudfrancis_baud Member RarePosts: 479
    edited February 2017



    Kyleran said:


    Maybe.  Interesting parallel, Conan Exiles just did an EA release and reportedly has cost $ 7M to make thus far.

    I would consider to be a focused niche title however seems supporting more than 40 players is a challenge.  

    This game is shooting for far more which increases the dev cost, how much I don't know.

    Do you have a source for the $7M? I'm pretty sure they've put way more money than that on Conan Exiles.
    JamesGoblin
  • LeirosLeiros Member UncommonPosts: 281
    Gamers are pretty fickle when it comes to a new MMORPG hitting the market. A company could have an NDA up until launch day and still sell tons of copies if the game is good. Otherwise they risk players burning out before the game is even completed. I for one hope that CU maintains the NDA and releases a quality product.
  • Righteous_RockRighteous_Rock Member RarePosts: 1,234
    With NDA, if your all bent out of shape because someone broke NDA and let the cat out of the bag at how boring, poorly optimized, or whatever load a shit you're trying to sell is, then that's your own fault. If CU unchained sucks, they will have an NDA until launch day just like all the other games that suck do. I really doubt CU is going to do that though.
  • MMOExposedMMOExposed Member RarePosts: 7,384
    Wow did MMO gamers suddenly forget history?

    Philosophy of MMO Game Design

  • francis_baudfrancis_baud Member RarePosts: 479
    edited February 2017
    With NDA, if your all bent out of shape because someone broke NDA and let the cat out of the bag at how boring, poorly optimized, or whatever load a shit you're trying to sell is, then that's your own fault. If CU unchained sucks, they will have an NDA until launch day just like all the other games that suck do. I really doubt CU is going to do that though.
    An NDA is completely appropriate at the 'true alpha' stage of development. While an NDA can't keep information completely private it's important to guard the current progress for the time being. [...]

    The interesting thing about CSE's NDA is that the developers themselves are constantly showing in-game WIP stuff on live stream.

    This afternoon, for example (edited):



    In that case the footage looks gorgeous, but they often show bugs, art in the making, first passes on systems, etc. I think the primary purpose of this NDA is unrelated to hiding things that may be displeasing to the public. Imo it's more about satisfying the studio's propensity to control information.


    JamesGoblin
  • nursonurso Member UncommonPosts: 327
    edited February 2017


    Last time I checked CU was aiming for 5k concurrent player servers
    As far as I remember MJ said that they aim for 50-60k+ subscribers, which means ~20k players per server assuming that there are 3 region-serverclusters (NAW, NAE and EU) ... so that would mean 5k players are equal to 25% server workload, which seems much too low to me. Therefore 10-15k+ concurrent players per server is much more realistic IMO.



    If CU unchained sucks, they will have an NDA until launch day just like all the other games that suck do.
    CU has such an open development process that I'm sure, ppl will recognize very early if the game sucks. ;)

    I think the primary purpose of this NDA is unrelated to hiding things that may be displeasing to the public. Imo it's more about satisfying the studio's propensity to control information.
    IMO "propensity to control information" is an odd choice of words ... it's not that CSE want to be in control of everything, but it has turned out, that strict control helps to keep rumours in check, which are much more dangerous to a crowdfunded (=trust-based) project then anything else -- losing the trust of your backers means certain death.
  • cheyanecheyane Member LegendaryPosts: 9,049



    Kyleran said:


    Maybe.  Interesting parallel, Conan Exiles just did an EA release and reportedly has cost $ 7M to make thus far.

    I would consider to be a focused niche title however seems supporting more than 40 players is a challenge.  

    This game is shooting for far more which increases the dev cost, how much I don't know.

    Do you have a source for the $7M? I'm pretty sure they've put way more money than that on Conan Exiles.
    http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/460856/all-costs-recouped-after-320k-units-sold-for-early-access-conan-exiles-mmorpg-com#latest

    This thread gave an indication of their costs.
    Chamber of Chains
  • PsYcHoGBRPsYcHoGBR Member UncommonPosts: 482
    Well I have faith in Mark Jacobs. DAoC is still going strong as a sub game purely because of RvR which imo has still got the best PVP I have played.
  • francis_baudfrancis_baud Member RarePosts: 479
    edited February 2017
    nurso said:
    I think the primary purpose of this NDA is unrelated to hiding things that may be displeasing to the public. Imo it's more about satisfying the studio's propensity to control information.
    IMO "propensity to control information" is an odd choice of words ... it's not that CSE want to be in control of everything, but it has turned out, that strict control helps to keep rumours in check, which are much more dangerous to a crowdfunded (=trust-based) project then anything else -- losing the trust of your backers means certain death.
    Propensity doesn't necessarily imply a conscious / reasoned will to do something, by definition it seems to be the contrary (natural inclination). I mentioned "to control information" rather than "to be in control of everything". There are many ways to keep rumours in check, one of them is to control information, although I doubt that the primary objective of CSE with this NDA is to keep rumours in check.

    cheyane said:

    Kyleran said:
    Maybe.  Interesting parallel, Conan Exiles just did an EA release and reportedly has cost $ 7M to make thus far.

    I would consider to be a focused niche title however seems supporting more than 40 players is a challenge.  

    This game is shooting for far more which increases the dev cost, how much I don't know.

    Do you have a source for the $7M? I'm pretty sure they've put way more money than that on Conan Exiles.
    http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/460856/all-costs-recouped-after-320k-units-sold-for-early-access-conan-exiles-mmorpg-com#latest

    This thread gave an indication of their costs.
    I quickly skimmed through the article and posts and I haven't seen any reliable information that indicates the total money put on CE so far is close to $7M.

    I think that we don't know out of the 320,000 units sold how many were standard edition (~$30) vs. Barbarian (~$60), how many players upgraded from Standard to Barbarian edition (+$30), how many copies were purchased directly on Steam rather than via the CE website, what is the percentage of the sale Steam gets and if this amount is accounted in the "net sales", if the 320,000 units sold is the only source of income that led to recoup the "costs directly related to" CE, if the "costs directly related to" CE include things like the rights to use Conan the Barbarian IP (since it was also used for other Funcom's projects), the office lease (and other costs that were not directly attributed to CE but to the studio as a whole), the tech developed in-house for other projects and reused for CE, the servers & other costs to operate the game, quality insurance, etc.

    From their website: "Direct costs are considered to be those related to salaries, social security and equipment for the development, technology and marketing teams, external PR & Marketing expenses and other external consulting or licensing expenses directly attributable to the project."

    JamesGoblin
  • francis_baudfrancis_baud Member RarePosts: 479
    nurso said:
    As far as I remember MJ said that they aim for 50-60k+ subscribers, which means ~20k players per server assuming that there are 3 region-serverclusters (NAW, NAE and EU) ... so that would mean 5k players are equal to 25% server workload, which seems much too low to me. Therefore 10-15k+ concurrent players per server is much more realistic IMO. 
    What I'd want is a single "server" with a large number of islands (more or less depending on the player population, maybe even with water flooding certain islands during downtime or if the player base declines), where all players could share the same world and the same unique story of the world of Camelot. Basically islands to replace traditional "servers".
    JamesGoblin
  • nursonurso Member UncommonPosts: 327


    What I'd want is a single "server" with a large number of islands (more or less depending on the player population, maybe even with water flooding certain islands during downtime or if the player base declines), where all players could share the same world and the same unique story of the world of Camelot. Basically islands to replace traditional "servers".
    Mh, isn't that exactly what we will get? AFAIK there will be 2 or 3 sever-clusters (aka 'world' 1 to 3) at launch,1-2 in the US in 1 in the EU. The server that made up the server-clusters represent the islands, so in short: 1 island = 1 server. Sadly, one gigantic world / server-cluster wont happen, because the delay will be much too high -- it's physically impossible.

  • francis_baudfrancis_baud Member RarePosts: 479
    nurso said:


    What I'd want is a single "server" with a large number of islands (more or less depending on the player population, maybe even with water flooding certain islands during downtime or if the player base declines), where all players could share the same world and the same unique story of the world of Camelot. Basically islands to replace traditional "servers".
    Mh, isn't that exactly what we will get? AFAIK there will be 2 or 3 sever-clusters (aka 'world' 1 to 3) at launch,1-2 in the US in 1 in the EU. The server that made up the server-clusters represent the islands, so in short: 1 island = 1 server. Sadly, one gigantic world / server-cluster wont happen, because the delay will be much too high -- it's physically impossible.

    Well the current plan I think is to create as many servers as CSE judge necessary (in regards to gameplay/design more than technical limitations I think). What I want is a single world where the entire CSE hosted EU/US player base can connect to. =P

    Imo it's feasible with the current tech they've got.

    The higher latency is already something CSE has to take care of because they've said EU players would be able to play with US players anyway. Combat is quite slow in CU so it may not be problematic.

    Maybe they could even host certain islands from that single world/server in EU and others in US East/West.

    The biggest issue would be that it would go against what they've said during KS. =/
    JamesGoblin
  • IselinIselin Member LegendaryPosts: 18,719
    edited February 2017
    I think that NDAs for MMOs are an antiquated idea these days that backfire more often than not.

    I remember during ESO's closed beta phase there were several troll videos posted simply to make it look as bad as possible. The NDA actually prevented effective visual counters to the damage that those videos did.

    That is the way of the online world now. Leaks will happen. Your carefully selected group of NDA testing participants will include trolls. Some of those trolls will try to hurt you. 
    "Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”

    ― Umberto Eco

    “Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” 
    ― CD PROJEKT RED

  • MarkJacobsMarkJacobs CEO City State EntertainmentMember RarePosts: 649

    Leiloni said:

    I think NDA's are a good idea for a company with a developing game, at least up to a certain point. Removing an NDA can help with hype - as you said, it's free marketing. But a game needs to be in a good enough state and far enough in development to actually be something worth showing off.



    Players have discerning tastes these days due to the sheer volume of games being thrown at us, so you can't throw a half finished unpolished product at us and expect a lot of positive results. The best response you can get by throwing a game out too early is for some people to say "Oh that looks promising, I'll look back in a few months." But in a few months they may have forgotten, may be having too much fun in another game to leave it to play yours, or maybe another new release was announced that they've decided is much cooler than yours. Timing is everything.


    QFT, +1, etc. As noted below, we stream a far amount and we'll be allowing other folks to stream once the new animation system and improved VFX system go in. We're talking a lot about stuff, and more streams coming, but we don't want to release video of the systems while they are total work-in-progress things. This won't last much longer I expect (and hope).





    Kyleran said:



    Spaced76 said:


    Same old Same old crap game company. PLEDGE NOW we only made 5 million dollar and yet the game is still not released . With that much money it should be Free to play!! and take you left over 4 million and live well . Maybe give free subs with your 4 mill extra. Next thing you know the game get cancelled and nobody get there money back . Kinda Like repopuation , albion online , star citizen. list go on on my friend . make it stop. Pledgeing is bad mmmk




    <snip>



    I remain unconvinced any quality MMORPG can be delivered for much less than $20M, but as this title is a partial it has a chance.


    <snippety snip>


    To add to that, CU current total should be ~$9M and that's before eventual overseas licensing, additional investments, (open) beta hype etc.

    I doubt they'll reach $20M, but IMO a sandbox aware of it's niche and well focused has good chances of delivering even with less.
     


    About that. I don't think we'll reach 20M either and fortunately, we don't need to in order to deliver what we have talked about, right from the beginning of the process.




    An NDA is completely appropriate at the 'true alpha' stage of development. While an NDA can't keep information completely private it's important to guard the current progress for the time being.



    Potential customers have a very short attention span and for many, viewing the game in its current status would be detrimental. As the game approaches 'true beta' it will have an excellent level of polish and should be appropriate to offer without an NDA.



    Bottom line. Many consumers have little patience and will only give a product one chance. CU deserves to be presented in the best light possible.



    Mark Jacobs and his team are doing an excellent job so far. He's put in extra of his own money to open a Seattle production office so he could hire the talent they need to get to beta. He has been completely open with backers with the development progress and he has my full trust. They've designed the engine from scratch and the game is being made the right way. Because of this City State Entertainment hasn't had a lot of bells and whistles to show off yet. I think once CU hits beta people are going to be delighted and shocked with the results.



    Thank you for that, appreciated. We're trying to do the right way, as gamers and developers, all the time. We have made mistakes, we will make mistakes but we will always be honest and open with our Backers and everybody else about them. That's the important part. Everybody screws up, the question is how big of a screw-up, did you learn from it, and are you honest about it. Fortunately, our mistakes have been less about code, and more about my mistaken belief that we could recruit enough senior engineers to move to Virginia. We have learned from it, corrected it, and explained this to our Backers during the entire process, not just at the end. That's how I want to be treated by other devs/publishers.




    Kyleran said:




    Kyleran said:



    Spaced76 said:


    Same old Same old crap game company. PLEDGE NOW we only made 5 million dollar and yet the game is still not released . With that much money it should be Free to play!! and take you left over 4 million and live well . Maybe give free subs with your 4 mill extra. Next thing you know the game get cancelled and nobody get there money back . Kinda Like repopuation , albion online , star citizen. list go on on my friend . make it stop. Pledgeing is bad mmmk




    <snip>



    I remain unconvinced any quality MMORPG can be delivered for much less than $20M, but as this title is a partial it has a chance.


    <snippety snip>


    To add to that, CU current total should be ~$9M and that's before eventual overseas licensing, additional investments, (open) beta hype etc.

    I doubt they'll reach $20M, but IMO a sandbox aware of it's niche and well focused has good chances of delivering even with less.
     


    Maybe.  Interesting parallel, Conan Exiles just did an EA release and reportedly has cost $ 7M to make thus far.

    I would consider to be a focused niche title however seems supporting more than 40 players is a challenge.  

    This game is shooting for far more which increases the dev cost, how much I don't know.

    Last time I checked CU was aiming for 5k concurrent player servers (but I have no forum access, so this might be dated). They more-less already built the engine able to support that, game problems are elsewhere.



    Correct but we think we can go higher, at least as of now. :)




    ...to be continued.

    Mark Jacobs
    CEO, City State Entertainment

  • MarkJacobsMarkJacobs CEO City State EntertainmentMember RarePosts: 649
    ...


    With NDA, if your all bent out of shape because someone broke NDA and let the cat out of the bag at how boring, poorly optimized, or whatever load a shit you're trying to sell is, then that's your own fault. If CU unchained sucks, they will have an NDA until launch day just like all the other games that suck do. I really doubt CU is going to do that though.



    I promise we won't do that, and as I say here, there, and everywhere, I don't make a lot of promises. I can't promise that we will do a full release on the opening of Beta 1, but I promise it won't be until launch day (or some CS thing like waiting till launch day - 1).




    With NDA, if your all bent out of shape because someone broke NDA and let the cat out of the bag at how boring, poorly optimized, or whatever load a shit you're trying to sell is, then that's your own fault. If CU unchained sucks, they will have an NDA until launch day just like all the other games that suck do. I really doubt CU is going to do that though.





    An NDA is completely appropriate at the 'true alpha' stage of development. While an NDA can't keep information completely private it's important to guard the current progress for the time being. [...]

    The interesting thing about CSE's NDA is that the developers themselves are constantly showing in-game WIP stuff on live stream.

    This afternoon, for example (edited):



    In that case the footage looks gorgeous, but they often show bugs, art in the making, first passes on systems, etc. I think the primary purpose of this NDA is unrelated to hiding things that may be displeasing to the public. Imo it's more about satisfying the studio's propensity to control information.





    We are definitely getting there visually. We want/need to push it further.


    nurso said:





    Last time I checked CU was aiming for 5k concurrent player servers
    As far as I remember MJ said that they aim for 50-60k+ subscribers, which means ~20k players per server assuming that there are 3 region-serverclusters (NAW, NAE and EU) ... so that would mean 5k players are equal to 25% server workload, which seems much too low to me. Therefore 10-15k+ concurrent players per server is much more realistic IMO.





    If CU unchained sucks, they will have an NDA until launch day just like all the other games that suck do.
    CU has such an open development process that I'm sure, ppl will recognize very early if the game sucks. ;)



    I think the primary purpose of this NDA is unrelated to hiding things that may be displeasing to the public. Imo it's more about satisfying the studio's propensity to control information.
    IMO "propensity to control information" is an odd choice of words ... it's not that CSE want to be in control of everything, but it has turned out, that strict control helps to keep rumours in check, which are much more dangerous to a crowdfunded (=trust-based) project then anything else -- losing the trust of your backers means certain death.



    Yep, agreed.


    PsYcHoGBR said:

    Well I have faith in Mark Jacobs. DAoC is still going strong as a sub game purely because of RvR which imo has still got the best PVP I have played.



    On behalf of everybody who worked on Dark Age of Camelot, I thank you. It was/is a great game that was made by a great team.

    And I thank you for your trust/faith in me, that is appreciated.


    TimEisen said:

    Thanks for the comments. I love the skepticism and high IQ of most MMORPG players.



    Me too. And thanks for the article Tim, as always. As you know, I tell people to be skeptical on places like this, I don't push "Buy us NOW", and generally do the opposite of what a bunch of other leads do. I don't mind skepticism at all, whether here or at work. We as a team talk/question each other all the time, usually politely and professionally. :) It's an important thing to keep in mind, whether you are backing a huge KS like Star Citizen or a smaller KS like ours.

    ...end part deux

    Mark Jacobs
    CEO, City State Entertainment

  • MarkJacobsMarkJacobs CEO City State EntertainmentMember RarePosts: 649
    ...continued



    nurso said:
    As far as I remember MJ said that they aim for 50-60k+ subscribers, which means ~20k players per server assuming that there are 3 region-serverclusters (NAW, NAE and EU) ... so that would mean 5k players are equal to 25% server workload, which seems much too low to me. Therefore 10-15k+ concurrent players per server is much more realistic IMO. 


    What I'd want is a single "server" with a large number of islands (more or less depending on the player population, maybe even with water flooding certain islands during downtime or if the player base declines), where all players could share the same world and the same unique story of the world of Camelot. Basically islands to replace traditional "servers".


    You would, would you? While we can't do a single server for a huge population (well, we can do it but we don't want to go down the route of some other games), the flooding of certain islands at certain times... :)





    nurso said:





    What I'd want is a single "server" with a large number of islands (more or less depending on the player population, maybe even with water flooding certain islands during downtime or if the player base declines), where all players could share the same world and the same unique story of the world of Camelot. Basically islands to replace traditional "servers".
    Mh, isn't that exactly what we will get? AFAIK there will be 2 or 3 sever-clusters (aka 'world' 1 to 3) at launch,1-2 in the US in 1 in the EU. The server that made up the server-clusters represent the islands, so in short: 1 island = 1 server. Sadly, one gigantic world / server-cluster wont happen, because the delay will be much too high -- it's physically impossible.





    Well the current plan I think is to create as many servers as CSE judge necessary (in regards to gameplay/design more than technical limitations I think). What I want is a single world where the entire CSE hosted EU/US player base can connect to. =P

    Imo it's feasible with the current tech they've got.

    The higher latency is already something CSE has to take care of because they've said EU players would be able to play with US players anyway. Combat is quite slow in CU so it may not be problematic.

    Maybe they could even host certain islands from that single world/server in EU and others in US East/West.

    The biggest issue would be that it would go against what they've said during KS. =/



    Yep. We could do it technically, it's not that hard but the problem is, I don't think it is the right way to do things for a game like ours. If we were a PvE game, I would definitely think about trying to do it, but that's for the future.


    Iselin said:

    I think that NDAs for MMOs are an antiquated idea these days that backfire more often than not.

    I remember during ESO's closed beta phase there were several troll videos posted simply to make it look as bad as possible. The NDA actually prevented effective visual counters to the damage that those videos did.

    That is the way of the online world now. Leaks will happen. Your carefully selected group of NDA testing participants will include trolls. Some of those trolls will try to hurt you. 



    Yep, that's always the risk as you correctly point out. It's why it's a no-win scenario and unfortunately, we can't reprogram humanity like Kirk reprogrammed the computer. :)

    Again, thanks Tim, Bill, and MMORPG and the folks who posted here. Back to work on purifying/refining spreadsheets I go. :)

    -Mark

    Mark Jacobs
    CEO, City State Entertainment

  • francis_baudfrancis_baud Member RarePosts: 479
    Yep. We could do it technically, it's not that hard but the problem is, I don't think it is the right way to do things for a game like ours. If we were a PvE game, I would definitely think about trying to do it, but that's for the future.
    Fine! Still plenty of time for me to understand why multiple servers is the right way to do things for CU. Or for you to realize that the advent of the One True Server is inevitable. :p
    JamesGoblin
  • nursonurso Member UncommonPosts: 327
    edited February 2017


    Fine! Still plenty of time for me to understand why multiple servers is the right way to do things for CU.
    IMO and as I claim before, it's because of the delay ... CU is a RvRvR (and thus PvP) game, thus it heavily relies on a good ping for the optimal experience. Also, a one-true-server would allow for time-zone cheesing ;)

    But in the case Amazons builds a server-platform in the middle of the Atlantic ocean it would nice to have an EU + NAW server-cluster ;)

  • francis_baudfrancis_baud Member RarePosts: 479
    edited February 2017
    nurso said:


    Fine! Still plenty of time for me to understand why multiple servers is the right way to do things for CU.
    IMO and as I claim before, it's because of the delay ... CU is a RvRvR (and thus PvP) game, thus it heavily relies on a good ping for the optimal experience. Also, a one-true-server would allow for time-zone cheesing ;)

    But in the case Amazons builds a server-platform in the middle of the Atlantic ocean it would nice to have an EU + NAW server-cluster ;)

    How well a game plays when affected by higher latency depends on many factors (length of the animation cycle, movement speed of the characters, nature and velocity of the projectiles, client vs. server authoritative architecture, lag compensation, quality of the server back-end tech, method to register hits on the targets, etc.).

    I think the impact varies a lot from one PvP game to the other, depending on those factors.  For examples Black Desert could be more affected than Darkfall Online, DF > TERA, TERA > Elder Scrolls Online, ESO > Life is Feudal, etc.

    In the case of CU, because the length of the animations is very long, that the physics & simulation are run by the server, that tracking is used on many projectiles, that the back-end server tech and anything network related are built with extremely large number of players in mind, ping may not have as detrimental of an impact on how the game plays as it has on how other PvP games play.

    We will see how it looks like during Beta 1, there should be plenty of people from all over the world joining the fight.  =)
    JamesGoblin
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