And simply having online/mp/co-op play will allow for paid powerleveling/boosting/boss/gear runs. But, that wasn’t a big enough boogieman to scare the white knights, was it?
Mainly because it’s not out yet and they just launched the online feature. I mean, there was a time when a game would launch complete and wouldn’t have issues like this, but online services were simpler and games in general were serving smaller audiences back then. Networking and datacenter technology, for as much as it has improved, is also hilariously complex versus how it was at that time also. It’s not just like you can pay money or flip a switch and it just work. There’s a lot of development considerations, especially for a small independent studio like Eleventh Hour.
You have me mixed up with someone else, by the way; despite being a fan of the game, I might be one of the most articulate (or just outspoken) critics of LE and EH in this community. And I, like you, am not a big fan of the always-online model. I think it’s mostly a waste of everyone’s time and money. But if they feel they have to do this, them at least making it where the community can be online and chat together, and play multiplayer together whenever we want without having to worry about our distance from one another has some value. (Though, for someone other than me; I don’t really like playing with strangers.)
Moreover, as much as I’d like to sit here and tell them how to run their business, they’re probably doing it for reasons they feel they have to in order to make money. I won’t need to - Time and sales numbers will tell if these were the right decisions. In a free market, reality will always reassert itself eventually. It’s not like anyone is interested in creating a game with servers and online that nobody pays for. Even EGS and Tencent try not to do that, and they have infinite money. So regardless of how either of us feels about it, we’re going to find out very soon and for certain if this is a good model or not. Will be interesting to see.
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sorry, over 30 what? I think you misunderstand something about internet age.
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I understand WHY they are doing it. I just don’t understand the ‘free pass’ devs must receive every single time their online/mp offerings shit the bed for the first 6+ months after going out the door (in whatever stage that is). I don’t understand why it needs to be some ground-breaking achievement, that online/mp has been achieved, and now we – the consumers – should just accept the fact there will be issues – the same issues that always happen.
If every new car that came out would randomly not start, or just turn off while in the middle of driving down the road, would you give the same amount of leniency? “Welp, it IS a new model car, we should expect this kind of thing”
What’s “hilariously complex” about it? I would expect the people running it to be proficient in its use and/or operation and deployment. And, like I’ve wondered again and again, why does it always feel like exploring new territory with online games? “We didn’t expect…” … “How could we account for…” yadda yadda? How could you not expect, or account for, the same damn thing that happens every GD time???
New features? Sure. But simply logging into a game, or saving character data, or latency/reliability? None of that is new to any game. Why are the same issues experienced every-single-time?
And, let’s be honest here. Is anyone not expecting issues on launch day for 1.0? Really…
The first online game came out in 1980. UO was release in '97. I perfectly understand internet age, because I have been around, and playing in it, from the beginning.
Becouse cars industry started around 140 years ago and more more complex software development about 40? You can’t just take some other code and use it in your custom made product.
I dunno, from what I’ve seen in the ticketing and some of the other forum posts, people are pretty upset about how the online service works. I’ve even stated, it might be the thing that could kill the game. However, EH is also working every ticket we send them and taking it seriously. They seem determined to figure it out. That’s why I’m reserving judgement.
This is kind of why you want to have a longer development cycle and have a beta like this, so you can work these things out before you ask someone to pay full price for the game, DLC and so on.
Probably not, but thanks for using perjoratives, they always lend an argument an air of sophistication and validity.
I’d imagine (being neither an automotive engineer nor a network engineer) that over the past century or so that people have been building cars that they’ve generally learned quite a bit to make sure things like that don’t happen. Though there are occasionally product recalls. I’d also assume that network engineering probably isn’t quite as mature and robust a discipline as automotive engineering. But what do i know.
I’d also, also, assume that the rest of the netcode (and code in general) that the game uses is “more complex and dynamic” than the login server stuff.
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I would dare to say all the moving parts making network games to work is just as complex, if not more than a car.
Login not working:
Maybe is a local software problem, or a local hardware issue.
Or a network-related issue ISP, router, poor comms, poor channeling, IP/Port blocking.
Or maybe a server issue: software problem, SO bottleneck, memory problem, virtual machine problem, game server side soft problem, hardware problem…
All of that is compounded of miriads of smaller possible problems, and I am sure I am leaving many other big ones out.
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You guys know that the development of a new car is a bit more expensive compared to develop a game, right? It takes 2-3 years of development, several hundreds of people working at the OEM, several dozens of people working at each manufacturer that produces parts for the OEM that assambles them. And it costs several hundreds of million €/$.
And thats not counting the production cost every day. Just the development.
…
And they still #### up sometimes.
The main reason for people not getting any upgrades in 100s hours is that they don’t set their lootfilters properly (or don’t use them at all), don’t know how to craft , how to know if crafting is worth it on that particular item, how to use runes / glyphs wisely etc. they just want to pick an item from the floor and it turns out to be an almost perfect. That is not the case with LE . Not in 99% cases
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Some games already cost hundreds of millions to develop (Genshin Impact was 200? EDIT: Ah, sorry that’s only the yearly cost of development for the updates), and everything is digital, no physical parts, and still is not regulated.
¿What’s exactly your point?
My point is that theres a reason why some products are releasing in a more stable state than others. The development of a car is far more expensive and complex than the development of a game. Especially today where you also not only have mechanical parts, but also a lot of different control units that also have software development attached to it.
The difference is that you have a lot of rules/laws to fulfill if you want to release a car.
You cannot release an early access car and tell people that the breaks my have bugs or the engine may stop at 160 kph.
OEMs have a very big incentive to not fuck up that has nothing to do with just the happiness of their customers.
The machinery that is behind the development of a car is so much bigger and therefore cars release in a subjectively more stable state than games.
Game development and car development is on different planets in terms of scale. For your 200.000.000 you can barely develop the engine. This is at least needed for the production lines to produce and assemble the engine of a car. Without any cost for real technical development of the product.
Also this game here costs 35€. Thats the lifetime cost if you don’t want to invest any more money. I wonder how many cars I can buy for that money.
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Yeah, I can agree about that.
Engine… Uhm… what about a microprocessor? You get one for a few hundreds, but the actual development cost? This is from Quora:
“Then the fabs, where the cost goes up… to actually make the silicons you need a huge fab to make it including clean dust free vast manufacturing space. the cost per a single fab can reach 10 billion, and a state of the art fab with finer process tech like 10nm & 7nm technology can cost even 30–40 billion it varies depending on manufacturing capacity and other factors.”
I was talking about all the moving parts that makes a network game to work, not of game vs car. I think everyone can see that, or I hope so.
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I love how everyone missed the point of that.
That when your car breaks, most people lose their minds… “F*@#*&ing piece of shit!”. Even moreso if it’s as you’re driving it out of the lot, or within the first 6 months of purchase. But, for video games, and the same issues that happen with every patch, launch, etc, we’re just like. “awww well, that’s what happens (all the f’n time), we need to be lenient and understanding”. And then bend over backwards kissing ass when they fix the problem(s) (that shouldn’t have been there in the first place) “OMG thank you for fixing your broken stuff, so I can actually play the game I paid money for! thankyouthankyouthankyou!!!”.
Isn’t it an apples to oranges kind of comparison to compare an early access game to a car?
Isn’t it a little disingenuous to act like bugs in newly introduced function in an early access game are some heinous betrayal of the consumer?
Isn’t it a little bit silly to get upset over issues that are in no way fixed by being angry?
It sucks things don’t work right, it sucks that early access games are riddled with bugs and long development times. But every single person that plays games in 2023, hell in 2018, already knew this about the deal here.
Early access games are precisely the experience we are having now, and it’s preposterous to act like bugs and madness like rollbacks are not to be expected during a rollout of a new feature in a paid beta. The devs aren’t getting a free pass on these issues, they are getting the exact leeway built into the basic transaction which playing the game at this stage entails.
It just seems silly to rage about getting exactly what you paid for.
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Well said. I for one, certainly did. I think getting to play the game in all the different phases and see what was on the developer’s minds was fun enough for me. As a creative person myself, I enjoy the process. Inevitably, the final product will never be as magnificent as everyone might have hoped it would be. But I’d say so far so good. It needs a fair amount of visual polish and a few more things to do. But overall, pretty fun game. I definitely don’t hate it.
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Didnt you know common sense was not allowed in this topic?!
If LE was in this state for 1.0, then there is a valid criticism. It is disingenuous to act like rollback has always existed, and furthermore, the devs wont fix it. You bought a game in beta, hell a lot of us bought it in alpha, inform yourselves about wtf you are buying. Jesus.
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Absolutely. I’d even say its comparing one apple to a plantation of orange trees.