I do agree. There is a self fulfilling prophecy in all of this. Without love, lower performing titles tend to sink to even lower performing levels.
Although given the shared engine, CO at least can benefit from engine improvements made for STO and NW. They still need dev time to do it, yes, but they don't have to reinvent the wheel at least.
There's always the hope/chance that they'll invest to try to capitalize on CoH folding, but that ship may have already sailed.
But really, it's a title that needs sizable investment to be fixed right. But it can't justify a sizable investment, since it's really questionable as to if it'll actually bring a return.
What will happen are attempts to get lockboxes in circulation and find something that their audience will purchase and get excited over that may be able to fund improving the core systems and getting more audience.
Very few developers are actually willing to approach a MMO like SE is approaching FF14. And would folks really be happy if Cryptic pulled a NGE on CO?
{nods in agreement with Ashen and Zahinder. Well articulated and thoughtful posts. Outside the possibility of inside information or one of us developing telepathy, we really will never know what occurs behind the veil at Cryptic.
Can someone refresh my memory? I seem to remember a Cryptic sponsored poll where the request for vehicles came in first. Is that correct?
My understanding, as it happened right before I started playing, was that players requested vehicle-based travel powers that kept the player visible.
What we got were become devices that hide the players. Nothing remotely close to what was requested.
The UNTIL hoverdisk is basically what players asked for.
Reinforcing my comment on how important is NWO for not only PWE/Cryptic but also for PW as corporation. Check this article about Saint Seiya Online. Quoting:
"The company also has Dota 2 and Neverwinter Nights scheduled for a China launch by year's end"
Having introducing NWO in China is a big challenge but it could mean a huge income for Cryptic's development. I hope they succeed, who knows, CO could get some splash on their success(wishful thinking).
On a side note: as a Saint Seiya series' fan it would be awesome having this game in the western market and/or CO could get some of those armors :biggrin:
He is not accountable to us. He is accountable to his employers.
Agreed.
The path that has been followed is pretty darned consistent and coherent. I mean, if you look at it, its a pretty recognizable pattern (enough so that people complain about it) even without a guide-book.
Lock Boxes.
Alerts.
Tiny drabs of content that seem to be intended to drive sales of lockbox keys.
The occasional bug fix.
Thats it. Its all there. Its not some mystery that Cryptic is hiding from us. Its all out there in the open for everyone to see. The problem is that some people seem to think that there will be more and that Brad is refusing to share it with us. Don't delude yourself into thinking otherwise. The direction is there in all of its depressing glory. Flatline followed (sooner or later) by a downward spiral.
Some of us have been speaking of CO's potential, largely untapped, for the longest time now. It isnt going to happen. There is not going to be a new golden age for this game. It is on life support and will not be coming off except to eventually die. Brad doesn't need to tell us that this is the direction of the game...it is painfully obvious.
Brad is like a junior officer of a sinking ship promoted so that the captain(s) who piloted it onto an iceberg can dress up like a civilian and climb into a life boat. He is at the helm of a sinking ship, no possibility of escape, no hope of reprieve, no help coming from the shipping company, the water is up to the portholes, everyone can see the ship sinking, and people are complaining about his lack of vision to bring about a miracle.
He is not accountable to us. He is accountable to his employers.
The path that has been followed is pretty darned consistent and coherent. I mean, if you look at it, its a pretty recognizable pattern (enough so that people complain about it) even without a guide-book.
Lock Boxes.
Alerts.
Tiny drabs of content that seem to be intended to drive sales of lockbox keys.
The occasional bug fix.
Thats it. Its all there. Its not some mystery that Cryptic is hiding from us. Its all out there in the open for everyone to see. The problem is that some people seem to think that there will be more and that Brad is refusing to share it with us. Don't delude yourself into thinking otherwise. The direction is there in all of its depressing glory. Flatline followed (sooner or later) by a downward spiral.
Some of us have been speaking of CO's potential, largely untapped, for the longest time now. It isnt going to happen. There is not going to be a new golden age for this game. It is on life support and will not be coming off except to eventually die. Brad doesn't need to tell us that this is the direction of the game...it is painfully obvious.
Brad is like a junior officer of a sinking ship promoted so that the captain(s) who piloted it onto an iceberg can dress up like a civilian and climb into a life boat. He is at the helm of a sinking ship, no possibility of escape, no hope of reprieve, no help coming from the shipping company, the water is up to the portholes, everyone can see the ship sinking, and people are complaining about his lack of vision to bring about a miracle.
The path that has been followed is pretty darned consistent and coherent. I mean, if you look at it, its a pretty recognizable pattern (enough so that people complain about it) even without a guide-book.
Lock Boxes.
Alerts.
Tiny drabs of content that seem to be intended to drive sales of lockbox keys.
The occasional bug fix.
Thats it. Its all there. Its not some mystery that Cryptic is hiding from us. Its all out there in the open for everyone to see. The problem is that some people seem to think that there will be more and that Brad is refusing to share it with us. Don't delude yourself into thinking otherwise. The direction is there in all of its depressing glory. Flatline followed (sooner or later) by a downward spiral.
Some of us have been speaking of CO's potential, largely untapped, for the longest time now. It isnt going to happen. There is not going to be a new golden age for this game. It is on life support and will not be coming off except to eventually die. Brad doesn't need to tell us that this is the direction of the game...it is painfully obvious.
Brad is like a junior officer of a sinking ship promoted so that the captain(s) who piloted it onto an iceberg can dress up like a civilian and climb into a life boat. He is at the helm of a sinking ship, no possibility of escape, no hope of reprieve, no help coming from the shipping company, the water is up to the portholes, everyone can see the ship sinking, and people are complaining about his lack of vision to bring about a miracle.
Frankly, I don't think we disagree on anything except what we mean by the use of the word "direction". Everything you pointed out is exactly what I mean when I say that this game "lacks direction". Technically it has direction (anything that keeps the game moving and changing, however tenuous, can be technically argued to be "direction"), but its not going anywhere that can be described as positive or conductive to the game's growth.
Its just a game in life support looking to monetize its last breaths of life (lockboxes with exclusive content) and invest as little as possible to continue breathing (minimal development or bug fixes).
as i have said before in earlier post over 6 months ago i gave this game a life span of 2 more years before they just shut it off.
after seeing the until carrier mission, and the upcoming mission with the kraken, lack of patchs, and just plain silence from the devs, things aren't looking good and we all agree with that.
but as the saying goes "the speaky wheel gets the grease." WE the PLAYERS are the ones that pay the bills to make this game run. The only way we could get SOME kind of communication is yes through trail turtle. But if enough people start complaining to higher powers (IE the CEO) and on a regular basis to find out what in the is going on then we MIGHT get somewhere, and some kind of response.
i for one believe that once neverwinter is out (gag) we will not be getting any devs back, cryptic has just put this game in a corner just so it can die and people will forget about it and sweep it under the rug as if it never happened, and its pretty convincing what games they are making money on.
and i for one as a player will NOT be putting another CENT into any cryptic games because they did the EXACT same thing in COH when it first started, and COH only got better AFTER they sold the rights to ncsoft and created paragon studios, after that the game got so much better.
something to think about....
maybe cryptic should start looking into selling CO to another studio since they sure don't seem to have any interest in it anymore
I came in when the game went F2P. That was over two years ago, IIRC. I've been seeing people calling for the imminent demise of CO on a regular basis ever since.
I give this game two more years before this guy logs in and says it's going to die in two more years...
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
After this game went F2P we used to get almost weekly updates, even if it was mostly cash shop stuff--at least we had costume sets to blow our money on (without having to gamble for the chance to maybe get what we were paying for). The year or so around and after the F2P transition was IMO the busiest development period in CO's history. Any calls for the game's demise (IMO) came mostly from haters going purely on anti-F2P sentiment and negative perception that was still prevalent about the business model.
The atmosphere now is different, coming from former fans and due to utter lack of development or growth rather than mere doomsaying related to F2P hate. Which by itself doesn't mean that the game is going to close down tomorrow, but the context was not the same then as it is now, and even if the game doesn't close its not growing regardless.
Although given the shared engine, CO at least can benefit from engine improvements made for STO and NW. They still need dev time to do it, yes, but they don't have to reinvent the wheel at least.
Actually, without a good look at both codebases, this is a wild-***-guess.
Nobody here really knows how much the engine was altered to accomodate STO.
And, given Cryptic's long-standing tradition of spaghetti-code and "Does it work-ish? SHIP IT!" I wouldn't want to bet any appreciable amount of money on it.
There's always the hope/chance that they'll invest to try to capitalize on CoH folding, but that ship may have already sailed.
Out over the horizon and gone. It's been six MONTHS since the announcement.
We've gotten vehicles, lockboxes, and a couple of "events" tacked on to this elaborate costume generator.
But really, it's a title that needs sizable investment to be fixed right. But it can't justify a sizable investment, since it's really questionable as to if it'll actually bring a return.
Basically, CO had its chance. Hell, it had SEVERAL. It either blew them, or managed to managed to screw them up just enough to give the impression of blowing them.
Very few developers are actually willing to approach a MMO like SE is approaching FF14. And would folks really be happy if Cryptic pulled a NGE on CO?
Arguably, what you're playing NOW *is* the NGE for CO.
Sorry if I'm coming across as a Debbie Downer here. But I've been around here since "Friends and Family" testing.
What I saw during testing, including complete lack of regard for feedback and atrocious developer 'tude, was not enough to keep me here even before launch.
The launch debacle kept me away.
The whole Vibora Pay debacle kept me away.
F2P didn't bring me back.
The giant patch didn't bring me back.
OnAlert didn't bring me back.
Only the closure of my preferred game brought me back here.
So, for 3-ish years I found it infinitely preferable to PAY a sub (two actually) for an older, competing game, rather than play here. AND I HAVE AN LTS!
And very little of it had to do with the game systems themselves. Most of it was the attitude of the developers.
After this game went F2P we used to get almost weekly updates, even if it was mostly cash shop stuff--at least we had costume sets to blow our money on (without having to gamble for the chance to maybe get what we were paying for). The year or so around and after the F2P transition was IMO the busiest development period in CO's history. Any calls for the game's demise (IMO) came mostly from haters going purely on anti-F2P sentiment and negative perception that was still prevalent about the business model.
The atmosphere now is different, coming from former fans and due to utter lack of development or growth rather than mere doomsaying related to F2P hate. Which by itself doesn't mean that the game is going to close down tomorrow, but the context was not the same then as it is now, and even if the game doesn't close its not growing regardless.
Brad is like a junior officer of a sinking ship promoted so that the captain(s) who piloted it onto an iceberg can dress up like a civilian and climb into a life boat. He is at the helm of a sinking ship, no possibility of escape, no hope of reprieve, no help coming from the shipping company, the water is up to the portholes, everyone can see the ship sinking, and people are complaining about his lack of vision to bring about a miracle.
Agreed. But this is why, specifically, I think he's doing a not good job. An officer who keeps his people in the dark is no good. He can't be trusted, and he can't be followed.
Actually, without a good look at both codebases, this is a wild-***-guess.
Nobody here really knows how much the engine was altered to accomodate STO.
And, given Cryptic's long-standing tradition of spaghetti-code and "Does it work-ish? SHIP IT!" I wouldn't want to bet any appreciable amount of money on it.
I do believe we were told that we are up to date codebase-wise.
Actually, without a good look at both codebases, this is a wild-***-guess.
Nobody here really knows how much the engine was altered to accomodate STO.
And, given Cryptic's long-standing tradition of spaghetti-code and "Does it work-ish? SHIP IT!" I wouldn't want to bet any appreciable amount of money on
The Kitchen Sink Patch was to "modernize" CO's codebase to bring it in line with STO's. The devs at the time said that, going forward, the plan was to keep all of CO's games in line with each other so that changes in one could be merged into the others.
Until we hear otherwise, we can assume that CO, Neverwinter and STO share the same codebase.
FWIW, if CO ran off a completely different codebase, it'd probably be dead by now. With this setup, the cost to maintain CO is lower than it otherwise would be.
Edit: an aside. While I think Cryptic treats their clients like marks at a carnival, I have to give them props for their engine. It's a work of freaking genius.
Edit: an aside. While I think Cryptic treats their clients like marks at a carnival, I have to give them props for their engine. It's a work of freaking genius.
And I remember talking to the Paragon devs at the last player's summit about how the Cryptic Engine was put together in CoH.
Pretty much everything hard-coded (as opposed to scripted) compiled against the mapserver, and dozens of things that didn't need to run being run every tick of the server clock...
Seriously. Pointless things, like a routine to check to see if the MOTD had changed so it could spam it at you. Running with every server tick. Rather than simply changing the MOTD and toggling the status once for everyone... Stuff that was bad coding practice even when *I* was in school (many, many moons ago...bah! GET OFF MY LAWN!).
I do believe we were told that we are up to date codebase-wise.
So, you won't believe anything else they tell you because they "haven't earned your trust back", but this you'll believe with no problem?
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
Actually, without a good look at both codebases, this is a wild-***-guess.
Nobody here really knows how much the engine was altered to accomodate STO.
And, given Cryptic's long-standing tradition of spaghetti-code and "Does it work-ish? SHIP IT!" I wouldn't want to bet any appreciable amount of money on it.
Actually, his comment is very much bang-on what one of the STO devs said last week.
Here's the relevant quote, emphasis mine as I included before and after so no one could say it was quoted out of context:
GoatShark: LoTR has the things they do with their events, so I'm always fascinated by the different things that people have discovered and working into their engines and it's always tricky to say well - what is something that, what is something that we can look at to inspire us, what can we do within the confines of our own engine; because, you know at Cryptic, we have kinda have a core engine that our games are based on so the positive to that is that whenever any team - you know, we have multiple teams, we have multiple games - when they advance the engine then everyone can benefit. But as far as - so the other thing that we do though is we say, okay the engine is not always going to evolve, right, a game engine is what it is and it will exist in a certain state for an amount of time - so during the time that it's in it's current state - okay what can our engine do, what are some cool things that we can do, how can we kind of push the limits of it and push the envelopes of it.
Others have said that as far as we know the CO engine is up to date. But right there you have a Cryptic dev saying that if any team makes a change the other games can benefit from it.
It's the things that get left that receive the most complaints #TelepathyNow
The work that was done on Telepathy is actually going to be transferred into STO instead as "Vulcan mind meld" abilities, and into NWO as their psionics animations.
Sorry, couldn't resist. I suspect we'll finally see them in CO in a few months, after the kraken has run its course.
It's the things that get left that receive the most complaints #TelepathyNow
The work that was done on Telepathy is actually going to be transferred into STO instead as "Vulcan mind meld" abilities, and into NWO as their psionics animations.
Sorry, couldn't resist. I suspect we'll finally see them in CO in a few months, after the kraken has run its course. Particularly as NWO hits late beta, there'll likely be fewer anims to finish and Cryptic can free up animators to finish the work that was done there.
Others have said that as far as we know the CO engine is up to date. But right there you have a Cryptic dev saying that if any team makes a change the other games can benefit from it.
*Can* being the operative weasel word here.
It doesn't mean the current base server code for CO actually *is* kept in sync with that of STO or NW for that matter.
Simply that the basic code is all of a given "family" and that similar functionality can be achieved by progressing the necessary feature blocks.
It doesn't mean that it's already there.
And it doesn't even begin to address how much actual WORK it would take to implement such progression on older instances.
And, talking with people who'd spent the last five years supporting and attempting to expand Cryptic (and cryptic) legacy code, let's just say my optimism is a very guarded thing and leave it at that...
When they say all Cryptic games they usually don't include CO because: One, its an embarrassment in comparison to the praise the other two get. Two, they do believe its up do date because that's what their boss told them since they don't personally work on CO themselves. Three, they don't know it exists.
All Cryptic staff should at least know that Champions Online exists. That way they can compare or at least stop saying "all Cryptic games" when they promote stuff like the Foundry.
The work that was done on Telepathy is actually going to be transferred into STO instead as "Vulcan mind meld" abilities, and into NWO as their psionics animations.
Sorry, couldn't resist. I suspect we'll finally see them in CO in a few months, after the kraken has run its course. Particularly as NWO hits late beta, there'll likely be fewer anims to finish and Cryptic can free up animators to finish the work that was done there.
And, talking with people who'd spent the last five years supporting and attempting to expand Cryptic (and cryptic) legacy code, let's just say my optimism is a very guarded thing and leave it at that...
A'right, guy, I think you're missing the forest for the trees.
The CoH engine had some (probably many) ill-conceived aspects. But, IIRC, the engine was built by a third party and was poorly documented from the get-go. It was, in many ways, the worst case scenario for a developer -- trying to figure out someone else's code while rapidly adding new systems and continuing the practice of shoddy documentation until, IME, I8 or so.
That's why Cryptic built a new engine, in-house, based of what they had learned. They wanted better control of their games. They wanted to be able to rapidly develop those games. And they wanted to understand what was happening under the hood.
Cryptic had a cultural shift at some point. They left the shoddy coding practices behind and put together what is, frankly, a stunning, extensible engine. Seriously, it's amazing. A large number of us might have issues with vehicles ... but the fact remains that they seem to be a slick piece of repurposing (STO ships?). Ditto for Alerts. The CoH engine broke when the devs tried to add a 7th enhancement slot to powers. We have multiple gearing / power systems.
Unfortunately, the git'r'done attitude shifted to producing minimal content and crappy out of combat elements.
FWIW, I think it's disingenuous to go from, paraphrasing, it being a WAG that Cryptic uses the same codebase for all its games to, "It doesn't mean the current base server code for CO actually *is* kept in sync with that of STO or NW for that matter."
There are lots of reasons to be POed at Cryptic. LOTS. But Cryptic's engine? And their care and feeding of it? Not one of them.
A'right, guy, I think you're missing the forest for the trees.
The CoH engine had some (probably many) ill-conceived aspects. But, IIRC, the engine was built by a third party and was poorly documented from the get-go. It was, in many ways, the worst case scenario for a developer -- trying to figure out someone else's code while rapidly adding new systems and continuing the practice of shoddy documentation until, IME, I8 or so.
That's why Cryptic built a new engine, in-house, based of what they had learned. They wanted better control of their games. They wanted to be able to rapidly develop those games. And they wanted to understand what was happening under the hood.
Uhm. No.
CoH: Cryptic Engine 1.0
CO: Cryptic Engine 2.0
The basic engine is the same (simply more advanced), and the mapserver works a little differently now (presenting as a multi-instanced single server rather than multi-instanced multi-server).
Moreover, I'm not pissed at Cryptic for their "care and feeding" of their engine (mostly because *I* am not the one who has to do the care and feeding).
I'm simply saying that simply because CO, STO, and NWN all evolved from the same root codebase doesn't mean that all three code branches are kept in sync feature-wise. So positing on the relative "ease" at which any given feature could be added is simply talking out of one's nether orifice.
The basic engine is the same (simply more advanced), and the mapserver works a little differently now (presenting as a multi-instanced single server rather than multi-instanced multi-server).
Moreover, I'm not pissed at Cryptic for their "care and feeding" of their engine (mostly because *I* am not the one who has to do the care and feeding).
I'm simply saying that simply because CO, STO, and NWN all evolved from the same root codebase doesn't mean that all three code branches are kept in sync feature-wise. So positing on the relative "ease" at which any given feature could be added is simply talking out of one's nether orifice.
It's clearly not something they could do just on a whim, Dan Stahl has mentioned that at certain times the code branches do have to align when new code is added to the core engine, it's usually at this point that any new features that one game has could be added to the other games, with some modification.
I believe that the last code-base update was not kitchen sink but On Alert.
If im not mistaken, when On Alert went into beta, before any content was added they updated the code base and had us test it for bugs for a few weeks.
This proses introduced a lot of buggs but was not a Kitchen Sink level catastrophe. This would imply that at the time of On Alert, the CO Cryptic engine was roughly in line with STOs.
There is also a strong implication that Vehicles came courtesy of some STO code.
Based on that, i would assume that COs cryptic engine is reasonably up to date and at least up to date enough to facilitate foundry to the same extent that STO has it.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
This here is one of those arguments that won't be concluded. Hyperstrike is already convinced, and we have no proof other than implication and experienced progression, and really it doesn't really matter regardless.
Even assuming we have the exact same code, Cryptic has already said it doesn't mean anything because for stuff to happen we need resources which we do not have. If we don't have the same code, who gives a ****? If the code for CO is the same as CoX (which I'm pretty sure it's not) then it's even more impressive that it has that kind of versatility.
Basically, it sucks to be us (CO players and fans), but I think I understand Cryptic's business decisions. I would be inclined to make the same choices were I in a similar situation.
I concur with this analysis. But that does not mean we have to be happy about it. As a player and someone with a LTS to both CO and STO I go out of my way to let people know exactly what they can expect from Cryptic. I also make sure they understand why I will stay as far away from NWO as I can, even though I was a fan of NWN 1.
I dislike their behavior, sensible though it may be from a business perspective. So why reward it? They've decided we're a writeoff, I prefer to differ.
I fully admit its not completely out of 100% altruistic motives, but why be above pettiness?
I concur with this analysis. But that does not mean we have to be happy about it. As a player and someone with a LTS to both CO and STO I go out of my way to let people know exactly what they can expect from Cryptic. I also make sure they understand why I will stay as far away from NWO as I can, even though I was a fan of NWN 1.
I dislike their behavior, sensible though it may be from a business perspective. So why reward it? They've decided we're a writeoff, I prefer to differ.
I fully admit its not completely out of 100% altruistic motives, but why be above pettiness?
I agree, business decisions have consequences. Some of them good and some of them bad. By taking those decisions a company should be preprared for both..
Comments
Although given the shared engine, CO at least can benefit from engine improvements made for STO and NW. They still need dev time to do it, yes, but they don't have to reinvent the wheel at least.
There's always the hope/chance that they'll invest to try to capitalize on CoH folding, but that ship may have already sailed.
But really, it's a title that needs sizable investment to be fixed right. But it can't justify a sizable investment, since it's really questionable as to if it'll actually bring a return.
What will happen are attempts to get lockboxes in circulation and find something that their audience will purchase and get excited over that may be able to fund improving the core systems and getting more audience.
Very few developers are actually willing to approach a MMO like SE is approaching FF14. And would folks really be happy if Cryptic pulled a NGE on CO?
My understanding, as it happened right before I started playing, was that players requested vehicle-based travel powers that kept the player visible.
What we got were become devices that hide the players. Nothing remotely close to what was requested.
The UNTIL hoverdisk is basically what players asked for.
Thanks for the response. I couldn't remember how the question was asked and with what specificity.
"The company also has Dota 2 and Neverwinter Nights scheduled for a China launch by year's end"
Having introducing NWO in China is a big challenge but it could mean a huge income for Cryptic's development. I hope they succeed, who knows, CO could get some splash on their success(wishful thinking).
On a side note: as a Saint Seiya series' fan it would be awesome having this game in the western market and/or CO could get some of those armors :biggrin:
Agreed.
...
Ouch
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^This.
So much this.
Couldn't be better said.
Frankly, I don't think we disagree on anything except what we mean by the use of the word "direction". Everything you pointed out is exactly what I mean when I say that this game "lacks direction". Technically it has direction (anything that keeps the game moving and changing, however tenuous, can be technically argued to be "direction"), but its not going anywhere that can be described as positive or conductive to the game's growth.
Its just a game in life support looking to monetize its last breaths of life (lockboxes with exclusive content) and invest as little as possible to continue breathing (minimal development or bug fixes).
after seeing the until carrier mission, and the upcoming mission with the kraken, lack of patchs, and just plain silence from the devs, things aren't looking good and we all agree with that.
but as the saying goes "the speaky wheel gets the grease." WE the PLAYERS are the ones that pay the bills to make this game run. The only way we could get SOME kind of communication is yes through trail turtle. But if enough people start complaining to higher powers (IE the CEO) and on a regular basis to find out what in the is going on then we MIGHT get somewhere, and some kind of response.
i for one believe that once neverwinter is out (gag) we will not be getting any devs back, cryptic has just put this game in a corner just so it can die and people will forget about it and sweep it under the rug as if it never happened, and its pretty convincing what games they are making money on.
and i for one as a player will NOT be putting another CENT into any cryptic games because they did the EXACT same thing in COH when it first started, and COH only got better AFTER they sold the rights to ncsoft and created paragon studios, after that the game got so much better.
something to think about....
maybe cryptic should start looking into selling CO to another studio since they sure don't seem to have any interest in it anymore
The Nemesis system needs fixing and here's ideas:
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. Henry Ford
I give this game two more years before this guy logs in and says it's going to die in two more years...
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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The atmosphere now is different, coming from former fans and due to utter lack of development or growth rather than mere doomsaying related to F2P hate. Which by itself doesn't mean that the game is going to close down tomorrow, but the context was not the same then as it is now, and even if the game doesn't close its not growing regardless.
Actually, without a good look at both codebases, this is a wild-***-guess.
Nobody here really knows how much the engine was altered to accomodate STO.
And, given Cryptic's long-standing tradition of spaghetti-code and "Does it work-ish? SHIP IT!" I wouldn't want to bet any appreciable amount of money on it.
Out over the horizon and gone. It's been six MONTHS since the announcement.
We've gotten vehicles, lockboxes, and a couple of "events" tacked on to this elaborate costume generator.
Basically, CO had its chance. Hell, it had SEVERAL. It either blew them, or managed to managed to screw them up just enough to give the impression of blowing them.
Arguably, what you're playing NOW *is* the NGE for CO.
Sorry if I'm coming across as a Debbie Downer here. But I've been around here since "Friends and Family" testing.
What I saw during testing, including complete lack of regard for feedback and atrocious developer 'tude, was not enough to keep me here even before launch.
The launch debacle kept me away.
The whole Vibora Pay debacle kept me away.
F2P didn't bring me back.
The giant patch didn't bring me back.
OnAlert didn't bring me back.
Only the closure of my preferred game brought me back here.
So, for 3-ish years I found it infinitely preferable to PAY a sub (two actually) for an older, competing game, rather than play here. AND I HAVE AN LTS!
And very little of it had to do with the game systems themselves. Most of it was the attitude of the developers.
"Champions-Online and Star Trek Online contained hundreds of hours of mediocre content!"
and "nothing was polished".
--Jack Emmert
Very true.
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Agreed. But this is why, specifically, I think he's doing a not good job. An officer who keeps his people in the dark is no good. He can't be trusted, and he can't be followed.
I do believe we were told that we are up to date codebase-wise.
Until we hear otherwise, we can assume that CO, Neverwinter and STO share the same codebase.
FWIW, if CO ran off a completely different codebase, it'd probably be dead by now. With this setup, the cost to maintain CO is lower than it otherwise would be.
Edit: an aside. While I think Cryptic treats their clients like marks at a carnival, I have to give them props for their engine. It's a work of freaking genius.
And I remember talking to the Paragon devs at the last player's summit about how the Cryptic Engine was put together in CoH.
Pretty much everything hard-coded (as opposed to scripted) compiled against the mapserver, and dozens of things that didn't need to run being run every tick of the server clock...
Seriously. Pointless things, like a routine to check to see if the MOTD had changed so it could spam it at you. Running with every server tick. Rather than simply changing the MOTD and toggling the status once for everyone... Stuff that was bad coding practice even when *I* was in school (many, many moons ago...bah! GET OFF MY LAWN!).
"Champions-Online and Star Trek Online contained hundreds of hours of mediocre content!"
and "nothing was polished".
--Jack Emmert
Pretty much,
The problem being that once they get it right they don't know what tha hell to do with it or how to manage it properly.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Here's the relevant quote, emphasis mine as I included before and after so no one could say it was quoted out of context:
Others have said that as far as we know the CO engine is up to date. But right there you have a Cryptic dev saying that if any team makes a change the other games can benefit from it.
Full interview is here:
http://www.subspace-radio.net/radio/ssr-interviews/18659-goatshark-interview-february-2013
Edit -- And for the record, this sort of thing makes me wonder why we don't have more of the cool stuff from STO. *sigh*
It's the things that get left that receive the most complaints #TelepathyNow
The work that was done on Telepathy is actually going to be transferred into STO instead as "Vulcan mind meld" abilities, and into NWO as their psionics animations.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
The work that was done on Telepathy is actually going to be transferred into STO instead as "Vulcan mind meld" abilities, and into NWO as their psionics animations.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
I'd rather have bestial and infernal changes be made #supernatualmeow
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*Can* being the operative weasel word here.
It doesn't mean the current base server code for CO actually *is* kept in sync with that of STO or NW for that matter.
Simply that the basic code is all of a given "family" and that similar functionality can be achieved by progressing the necessary feature blocks.
It doesn't mean that it's already there.
And it doesn't even begin to address how much actual WORK it would take to implement such progression on older instances.
And, talking with people who'd spent the last five years supporting and attempting to expand Cryptic (and cryptic) legacy code, let's just say my optimism is a very guarded thing and leave it at that...
"Champions-Online and Star Trek Online contained hundreds of hours of mediocre content!"
and "nothing was polished".
--Jack Emmert
All Cryptic staff should at least know that Champions Online exists. That way they can compare or at least stop saying "all Cryptic games" when they promote stuff like the Foundry.
Rage..... So much Rage
I didn't say I believe it, I said I believe we were told it. I was very deliberate about my phrasing.
The CoH engine had some (probably many) ill-conceived aspects. But, IIRC, the engine was built by a third party and was poorly documented from the get-go. It was, in many ways, the worst case scenario for a developer -- trying to figure out someone else's code while rapidly adding new systems and continuing the practice of shoddy documentation until, IME, I8 or so.
That's why Cryptic built a new engine, in-house, based of what they had learned. They wanted better control of their games. They wanted to be able to rapidly develop those games. And they wanted to understand what was happening under the hood.
Cryptic had a cultural shift at some point. They left the shoddy coding practices behind and put together what is, frankly, a stunning, extensible engine. Seriously, it's amazing. A large number of us might have issues with vehicles ... but the fact remains that they seem to be a slick piece of repurposing (STO ships?). Ditto for Alerts. The CoH engine broke when the devs tried to add a 7th enhancement slot to powers. We have multiple gearing / power systems.
Unfortunately, the git'r'done attitude shifted to producing minimal content and crappy out of combat elements.
FWIW, I think it's disingenuous to go from, paraphrasing, it being a WAG that Cryptic uses the same codebase for all its games to, "It doesn't mean the current base server code for CO actually *is* kept in sync with that of STO or NW for that matter."
There are lots of reasons to be POed at Cryptic. LOTS. But Cryptic's engine? And their care and feeding of it? Not one of them.
Uhm. No.
CoH: Cryptic Engine 1.0
CO: Cryptic Engine 2.0
The basic engine is the same (simply more advanced), and the mapserver works a little differently now (presenting as a multi-instanced single server rather than multi-instanced multi-server).
Moreover, I'm not pissed at Cryptic for their "care and feeding" of their engine (mostly because *I* am not the one who has to do the care and feeding).
I'm simply saying that simply because CO, STO, and NWN all evolved from the same root codebase doesn't mean that all three code branches are kept in sync feature-wise. So positing on the relative "ease" at which any given feature could be added is simply talking out of one's nether orifice.
"Champions-Online and Star Trek Online contained hundreds of hours of mediocre content!"
and "nothing was polished".
--Jack Emmert
It's clearly not something they could do just on a whim, Dan Stahl has mentioned that at certain times the code branches do have to align when new code is added to the core engine, it's usually at this point that any new features that one game has could be added to the other games, with some modification.
If im not mistaken, when On Alert went into beta, before any content was added they updated the code base and had us test it for bugs for a few weeks.
This proses introduced a lot of buggs but was not a Kitchen Sink level catastrophe. This would imply that at the time of On Alert, the CO Cryptic engine was roughly in line with STOs.
There is also a strong implication that Vehicles came courtesy of some STO code.
Based on that, i would assume that COs cryptic engine is reasonably up to date and at least up to date enough to facilitate foundry to the same extent that STO has it.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
Even assuming we have the exact same code, Cryptic has already said it doesn't mean anything because for stuff to happen we need resources which we do not have. If we don't have the same code, who gives a ****? If the code for CO is the same as CoX (which I'm pretty sure it's not) then it's even more impressive that it has that kind of versatility.
I concur with this analysis. But that does not mean we have to be happy about it. As a player and someone with a LTS to both CO and STO I go out of my way to let people know exactly what they can expect from Cryptic. I also make sure they understand why I will stay as far away from NWO as I can, even though I was a fan of NWN 1.
I dislike their behavior, sensible though it may be from a business perspective. So why reward it? They've decided we're a writeoff, I prefer to differ.
I fully admit its not completely out of 100% altruistic motives, but why be above pettiness?
I agree, business decisions have consequences. Some of them good and some of them bad. By taking those decisions a company should be preprared for both..