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Actually....I remember the grind from 3-5 on Savet Hegar as being very long and tedious....so a new player could/would have this same problem. They don't have access to the more powerful weapons (most likely), they don't have the knowledge, and they have 1 or 2 missions that give combat xp.
Here are my suggestions:
1. Pay, Beg, or Borrow someone to do voiceovers for the tutorials. From a technical standpoint, we have 4 platforms support and integrated voice chat. As much as I like reading, I shouldn't be reading unless I missed something from the voiceover.
2. Focused combat missions that teach specific skills, and grant meaningful combat experience.
Example: "Our competitor is shipping a load of holo-disks full of...midget documentaries to Itan. Take this warthog with *flares and a mega-positron to intercept the convoy. You must knock the fleeing ship off trajectory with a flare, and use the mega-positron to convince them the Itanis have enough midget documentaries. Once they've dropped their load and fled, bring us back a sample...purely for research, you understand."
That being said, you guys are doing a lot of great things. Keep up the good work.
Here are my suggestions:
1. Pay, Beg, or Borrow someone to do voiceovers for the tutorials. From a technical standpoint, we have 4 platforms support and integrated voice chat. As much as I like reading, I shouldn't be reading unless I missed something from the voiceover.
2. Focused combat missions that teach specific skills, and grant meaningful combat experience.
Example: "Our competitor is shipping a load of holo-disks full of...midget documentaries to Itan. Take this warthog with *flares and a mega-positron to intercept the convoy. You must knock the fleeing ship off trajectory with a flare, and use the mega-positron to convince them the Itanis have enough midget documentaries. Once they've dropped their load and fled, bring us back a sample...purely for research, you understand."
That being said, you guys are doing a lot of great things. Keep up the good work.
From 3 on up you have a buttload of missions that level up combat, weapons, etc. Border Skirmishes, Hive Skirmishes, Advanced Combat Practice, Escort missions (kill bots in storms for XP and cash!).
Also below lvl 5 you have the Gauntlet and Rogue Queen missions as well which both give very good XP for the effort.
Really what I thought was the worst grind was 2 to 3. All the easy stuff like the Courier missions were done, and Basic Combat Practice bonuses quit increasing, so it was just grinding Artemis collectors (i did these for more XP than Denteks) which sucks. At that point, you dont really have good enough gear to take on stuff like TyCorps and ApuTechs without the skills of an experienced player.
The Rogue Queen or Gauntlet PCC missions weren't in there when I did it. Those make it more interesting.
Also below lvl 5 you have the Gauntlet and Rogue Queen missions as well which both give very good XP for the effort.
Really what I thought was the worst grind was 2 to 3. All the easy stuff like the Courier missions were done, and Basic Combat Practice bonuses quit increasing, so it was just grinding Artemis collectors (i did these for more XP than Denteks) which sucks. At that point, you dont really have good enough gear to take on stuff like TyCorps and ApuTechs without the skills of an experienced player.
The Rogue Queen or Gauntlet PCC missions weren't in there when I did it. Those make it more interesting.
Don't be like arf. Grind dentek collectors, not artemis collectors.
The combat xp bonus maxes out at the same point for both types, and while the weapon xp is slightly better for the artemis collectors, the amount of time it takes to kill each bot is not worth it.
PS: An ad homonim attack is an attack on the argument you make based on your many, many, many, many failings as a person. Don't really see how I could be attacking your argument without reading it, but hey, if I am, go me!
The combat xp bonus maxes out at the same point for both types, and while the weapon xp is slightly better for the artemis collectors, the amount of time it takes to kill each bot is not worth it.
PS: An ad homonim attack is an attack on the argument you make based on your many, many, many, many failings as a person. Don't really see how I could be attacking your argument without reading it, but hey, if I am, go me!
1. Pay, Beg, or Borrow someone to do voiceovers for the tutorials.
I have to disagree with this, because it's really hard to get voice acting right in video games, and this is compounded by the fact that VO lacks humanoid avatars. Just try to picture it; Where is the voice coming from? Who is speaking?
Voice overs also tend to work better in single player RPGs, but not in MMOs. In a single player RPG you have one player who is likely going to experience the voice acting one time, whereas in an MMO you potentially have one player playing a certain portion over and over within the persistent universe. Written word leaves more open to interpretation, as it lacks specific nuance that comes with inflection, timbre, etc. This is a good thing.
You also free up the player to go over the reading at his/her own pace. Sure, there is a lot of material out there, but different people have different reading speeds. With voice acting, the material is temporally localized. You get some players who, rather than listen to the entire line, cut through the end of the dialog so it sounds like the voice actors are beginning their sentences but never finishing them. Writing avoids some of this awkwardness.
I have to disagree with this, because it's really hard to get voice acting right in video games, and this is compounded by the fact that VO lacks humanoid avatars. Just try to picture it; Where is the voice coming from? Who is speaking?
Voice overs also tend to work better in single player RPGs, but not in MMOs. In a single player RPG you have one player who is likely going to experience the voice acting one time, whereas in an MMO you potentially have one player playing a certain portion over and over within the persistent universe. Written word leaves more open to interpretation, as it lacks specific nuance that comes with inflection, timbre, etc. This is a good thing.
You also free up the player to go over the reading at his/her own pace. Sure, there is a lot of material out there, but different people have different reading speeds. With voice acting, the material is temporally localized. You get some players who, rather than listen to the entire line, cut through the end of the dialog so it sounds like the voice actors are beginning their sentences but never finishing them. Writing avoids some of this awkwardness.
@Savet: The problem is, those sorts of missions would have to be handled outside the mission editor using custom code, and I doubt the devs like the idea of adding more non-editor missions - the more special cases you add to a system the uglier things get. The better route would be to update the editor to allow things like triggering events when ships reach X% of their armor, or take certain kinds of damage, etc., and for checking what kind of ship and gear the player is using. Then it would be possible for the PCC to create training missions that require you to use certain gear to fight and what not.
I could pay, beg, or borrow some of the voiceover talent I get to record from time to time to take a VERY quick pass at the tutorial texts. I don't have any scheduled atm, but they always come up. I once did a production of Two Gentleman of Verona that had the actress who voiced "Cortana" in Halo playing Sylvia. The tech crew was over the moon geeking out over it. ;)
@Phaserlight: I think that JUST for the tutorials it could work. You could explain it away in many ways for the training stage. Of course I already want a different voice for each nation... What was my budget again? Triple it!
@Phaserlight: I think that JUST for the tutorials it could work. You could explain it away in many ways for the training stage. Of course I already want a different voice for each nation... What was my budget again? Triple it!
A other long post from me ( you will get used to it )
having tried a number of different videocard setups and a number of settings here are the results:
Intel cards: graphics are really bad black rock bug included etc ( i would flag this as unplayable ), having some fallback texture he would help a a lot or some notice that the game might under preform on this graphics setup.
Nvidia cards:
Low settings:
Looks horrible a little better then the intels as they don't seem to have the graphics bugs ( black roids )
High settings ( meaning everything as high as it will go ):
The model details on a specially roids are really bad ( specially on ice where i can see the lines in the rocks, and you can see how it was modeled effectively )
but even on other roids it looks well shitty and given that roids are the most common element in the game adding a extra layer of polygons would not hurt, not sure but some rocks like there made out of 20 polygons now i don't know if there a reasoning behind it but it looks REALLY bad, specially give that more texture detail only makes it looks worse as its clearly a image put on a roid and roids generally feel really flat because of it.
Stations look okish: Not a insane level of detail here ( i expect more from the highest possible settings i can get in a game ), but it looks well passable i'm not in loving with the station looks but its not like wow that ugly.
Ships are mostly fine ( the seemed to have gotten the highest level of detail ).
Wormholes well its a 2d image in space ( might be fun for the eye to make it a 3d object ), but not sure how you would show a wormhole in 3d, i just dislike the current solution from a design standpoint.
Most of the Hud is fine, there 2d sprites so yeah not much to say there.
The Focefeeld or shield effect on the leaving the station sorry but that almost looks like something is messing up, it looks really bad specially when you have high quality textures on a ship, personally i would go for hiding the shield completely, this is only when you leave a launch bay but given the nature of the game you do that a lot
exploding stuff this looks really bad: it almost looks like this sprite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRPsz4D-fFI ( CS 1.6 )
Weapons Fire:
Is reasonable for most weapons, as there not that long on screen anyway.
So if i personally had to prioritize poly count put less in ships and more in roids sorry for the delay on the reply.
having tried a number of different videocard setups and a number of settings here are the results:
Intel cards: graphics are really bad black rock bug included etc ( i would flag this as unplayable ), having some fallback texture he would help a a lot or some notice that the game might under preform on this graphics setup.
Nvidia cards:
Low settings:
Looks horrible a little better then the intels as they don't seem to have the graphics bugs ( black roids )
High settings ( meaning everything as high as it will go ):
The model details on a specially roids are really bad ( specially on ice where i can see the lines in the rocks, and you can see how it was modeled effectively )
but even on other roids it looks well shitty and given that roids are the most common element in the game adding a extra layer of polygons would not hurt, not sure but some rocks like there made out of 20 polygons now i don't know if there a reasoning behind it but it looks REALLY bad, specially give that more texture detail only makes it looks worse as its clearly a image put on a roid and roids generally feel really flat because of it.
Stations look okish: Not a insane level of detail here ( i expect more from the highest possible settings i can get in a game ), but it looks well passable i'm not in loving with the station looks but its not like wow that ugly.
Ships are mostly fine ( the seemed to have gotten the highest level of detail ).
Wormholes well its a 2d image in space ( might be fun for the eye to make it a 3d object ), but not sure how you would show a wormhole in 3d, i just dislike the current solution from a design standpoint.
Most of the Hud is fine, there 2d sprites so yeah not much to say there.
The Focefeeld or shield effect on the leaving the station sorry but that almost looks like something is messing up, it looks really bad specially when you have high quality textures on a ship, personally i would go for hiding the shield completely, this is only when you leave a launch bay but given the nature of the game you do that a lot
exploding stuff this looks really bad: it almost looks like this sprite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRPsz4D-fFI ( CS 1.6 )
Weapons Fire:
Is reasonable for most weapons, as there not that long on screen anyway.
So if i personally had to prioritize poly count put less in ships and more in roids sorry for the delay on the reply.
Do you have full scene glow effect (bloom) on when you use high settings? It makes many things look a lot better, especially explosions.
The black roids and other colors as well are a driver problem. Linux has 2 drivers for Nvidia cards Nuovo and Nvidia.
@slime73: yes
@PaKettle: i know its a know issue but its something you see on a intel test run ( i said it was not there with a Nvidia card because well i use the binary driver ).
i tested on multiple machines, hints i get different results depending on the hardware, so i write that down.
@PaKettle: i know its a know issue but its something you see on a intel test run ( i said it was not there with a Nvidia card because well i use the binary driver ).
i tested on multiple machines, hints i get different results depending on the hardware, so i write that down.
It's HENCE, not HINTS. Sorry, but I just couldn't take it anymore.
The ice roids are supposed to look crystalline, so I don't see a problem with their appearance. As for other roids - yeah, some of them are pretty low-poly. In most sectors they could do with an increase, but on the other hand I don't think the existing asteroids are scheduled to continue existing indefinitely. My understanding is that they are eventually going to be replaced with something more like the dense asteroid fields in certain Deneb sectors. In that case, their polycount would probably need to be limited due to the shear quantity of asteroids. I haven't been to Deneb in a long time so I don't remember what those roids looked like.
Also, I think some of the most sharp-edged looking asteroids are supposed to look like that; they were shattered from over-mining or being hit with heavy weaponry or something.
The bone roids are pretty cool though.
In VegaStrike they have a wireframe image to show where wormholes are, but IMO it looks like crap. I think using a simple hud indicator like VO does is probably the best solution.
The ice roids are supposed to look crystalline, so I don't see a problem with their appearance. As for other roids - yeah, some of them are pretty low-poly. In most sectors they could do with an increase, but on the other hand I don't think the existing asteroids are scheduled to continue existing indefinitely. My understanding is that they are eventually going to be replaced with something more like the dense asteroid fields in certain Deneb sectors. In that case, their polycount would probably need to be limited due to the shear quantity of asteroids. I haven't been to Deneb in a long time so I don't remember what those roids looked like.
Also, I think some of the most sharp-edged looking asteroids are supposed to look like that; they were shattered from over-mining or being hit with heavy weaponry or something.
The bone roids are pretty cool though.
In VegaStrike they have a wireframe image to show where wormholes are, but IMO it looks like crap. I think using a simple hud indicator like VO does is probably the best solution.
I think a DS9-style wormhole activation plus the radar visual would be cool, although the current 2D one is certainly good enough for now.
I think he's seeing the ice without the refraction shader. It does look kind of silly without that, but that's a compatibility fallback. I was hoping he would at least watch the game trailer, and say if it looked the same for him.
The shattered rock chunks actually are.. shattered. When put together they all form a single asteroid. I think they may be in this form somewhere in the game, too. And yes, the much greater density of future sectors precludes having very high poly individual asteroids. Honestly, I don't think the shattered chunks look bad, although I understand that they're stylistically different from what people may expect for objects floating in space (which is a little ironic; if people spend a thousand years strip-mining things like 243 Ida using laser cutting tools, we might end up seeing something like our shattered fields).
All the asteroids have detail textures too, which add a second pass of detail when close-up, but this is only visible on capable hardware. If he isn't seeing refraction, he almost certainly isn't seeing that. Some graphical improvements are only on DirectX, too, due to a lack of pervasive ARB extensions to do the same things on OpenGL at the time.
I am not responsible for Intel making horrible, horrible drivers. We have more workarounds and fallbacks for Intel integrated graphics chips than for every other manufacturer combined. We cannot keep up with their ability to break stuff.
Bottom line: On my Windows 7 machine at home, a modest quad-core Phenom II with an ATI 5870, everything at max with AA in 1920x1200 (24"), the game does not look bad. Some areas are better or worse than others, and some I definitely want to improve (the force field thing being one of them), but we've done a lot of that over the last couple of years and will continue doing so when time is available. We definitely don't look like EVE Online, but our game is also a 230MB download, as opposed to 4.3GB, so that was a knowing tradeoff.
The shattered rock chunks actually are.. shattered. When put together they all form a single asteroid. I think they may be in this form somewhere in the game, too. And yes, the much greater density of future sectors precludes having very high poly individual asteroids. Honestly, I don't think the shattered chunks look bad, although I understand that they're stylistically different from what people may expect for objects floating in space (which is a little ironic; if people spend a thousand years strip-mining things like 243 Ida using laser cutting tools, we might end up seeing something like our shattered fields).
All the asteroids have detail textures too, which add a second pass of detail when close-up, but this is only visible on capable hardware. If he isn't seeing refraction, he almost certainly isn't seeing that. Some graphical improvements are only on DirectX, too, due to a lack of pervasive ARB extensions to do the same things on OpenGL at the time.
I am not responsible for Intel making horrible, horrible drivers. We have more workarounds and fallbacks for Intel integrated graphics chips than for every other manufacturer combined. We cannot keep up with their ability to break stuff.
Bottom line: On my Windows 7 machine at home, a modest quad-core Phenom II with an ATI 5870, everything at max with AA in 1920x1200 (24"), the game does not look bad. Some areas are better or worse than others, and some I definitely want to improve (the force field thing being one of them), but we've done a lot of that over the last couple of years and will continue doing so when time is available. We definitely don't look like EVE Online, but our game is also a 230MB download, as opposed to 4.3GB, so that was a knowing tradeoff.
Inc, your info is a bit dated: the Eve installer said it needed 18GB free!
Edit: re-reading this you said download and since you guys have been doing so much work with tablets and phones you probably meant what you said: the download size (I think the base Verizon plan maxes out at 2GB before they start to either charge you more or cut you off???) instead of installed on disk size.
Either way, it is pretty impressive what you guys have done with a game that is still compatible with older hardware. I REALLY appreciate that seeing as how my main PC is a 3 year old laptop with an even older, no longer supported by ATI/AMD "GPU" (so no mfg driver for Linux if you use most current distros.)
Edit: re-reading this you said download and since you guys have been doing so much work with tablets and phones you probably meant what you said: the download size (I think the base Verizon plan maxes out at 2GB before they start to either charge you more or cut you off???) instead of installed on disk size.
Either way, it is pretty impressive what you guys have done with a game that is still compatible with older hardware. I REALLY appreciate that seeing as how my main PC is a 3 year old laptop with an even older, no longer supported by ATI/AMD "GPU" (so no mfg driver for Linux if you use most current distros.)