Camelot Unchained MMO

Tmac47_sl said:

I can read the headlines now, "Game maker raises $2m and disappears into the night."

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All of the action moved from the Kickstarter comment section over to the Camelot Unchained founder forums.

I need to figure out how to read the forums without coughing up any dinero. I am intrigued and want this guy to succeed, but the cheap bastard in me refuses to fund a game from an ex-EA executive.

Gecko_sl said:

I need to figure out how to read the forums without coughing up any dinero. I am intrigued and want this guy to succeed, but the cheap bastard in me refuses to fund a game from an ex-EA executive.

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As far as I am concerned they are 100% totally not worth reading and a huge waste of time, basically like most forums. Maybe like 10% of the posts are about possible game discussion that are at all relevant or don't go directly against what should be in a pvp game or the founding principles. I read them alot for the first weekish then realized it was a huge waste of time and none of it is probably going to matter until they let people start testing. I am also imagining there will be different sections for people in the IT/Alpha/Beta atleast I am hoping there are.

Redtah_sl said:

WP were always better than DOKs, They had an easier time landing skill is if they were melee and their styles did more damage because it was based off a 2h damage and not one 1h. Also they had an easier time healing because their heals delved for slightly more except for the 11 point ability sigmars refresher or whatver which actually have a WHOLE EXTRA TICK for the entire time I played. now i know not much of this really matters but heres the one point that actually does. Smite was the best resource gainer ability for WP, it was castable on the move and gave a guranteed 15? resource and an ADDITIONAL 15 for every target it hit. DOK Equivalent? instant cast that gave only 15 resource if it hit atleast 1 person and no additional per extra target hit. Resource management was a joke on my WP but was a pain in the ass on my DOK until chalices/books and then both were pretty even except wait WP got an AOE detaunt and DOK only got single target. Imbalance much?
Not really sure about BO/SM both classes were terribly buggy. Witch Hunters were always better than Witch Elves. WH/WE was like BW/Sorc again WH got a shit ton of utility and even some ranged skills movement barbs healing barbs so much more utility and around the same damage at WE. I don't know why Archmages would have been better than Shaman I actually would have put that the other way but I didn't know enough about AMs to refute this. Chosen were broke and so were IB but chosen got nerfed before KOTBS came out and IB did not before BG came out. So when the mirrors finally launched BG was a joke and KOTBS was as good if not better than chosen. SW were so bad Squids were bad at launch too but got buffed shortly thereafter and became awesome gods of ranged damage. Maurader > WL until they nerfed the way time buildup skills worked. Conc blow used to make instant spells have a cast time so it was actually a feasible way for us to kill WP groups then it got nerfed and WL > Maurader.

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First, learn the use of paragraphs please.

Second you?re completely wrong about the WH. My first 50 was a WH and I can tell you it was NOT as good as the WE. The WH didn?t have the burst damage that the WE had. The one saving grace we found was using the tactics Flowing Accusations and Sanctified Bullets. The WH?s main offense was building up accusations with his sword and then firing off his gun for the execution. You could build up to five accusations, which is what most people initially did before firing your gun.

It was found shortly after launch that this was not the most efficient and damaging method. Instead you took the tactic Flowing Accusations. This would give you a 50% chance to proc two accusations whenever you used an execution. So instead of building up to 5 accusations, you would just get one an then fire your execution. 50% of the time you?d be able to do an execution again without having to use your sword. With just one proc you would do more damage in 9s than you would by getting up to five accusations.

The kicker though was Sanctified Bullets. Using blessed bullets of purity, whenever you would do an execution, you would heal yourself for 150% of the damage it did. So every time you?d fire your gun to do an execution you?d heal yourself for 150% of its damage.

The WH wasn?t the best burst dps class by far. The WE was much better but the WH was the best 1v1 class in the game. There was no class that could beat you, not even the bugged Maurader. It was virtually the only viable spec for the WH. Then it got nerfed and pretty much every WH left the class for something else.

Redtah_sl said:

As far as I am concerned they are 100% totally not worth reading and a huge waste of time, basically like most forums. Maybe like 10% of the posts are about possible game discussion that are at all relevant or don't go directly against what should be in a pvp game or the founding principles. I read them alot for the first weekish then realized it was a huge waste of time and none of it is probably going to matter until they let people start testing.

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I paid $5 to the kickstarter to have access and while I have not spent any time on the forums this is completely what I assumed. There's nothing to talk about yet.

This game is the new 38s Studios MMO imo

Agonizing the Bait Master_sl said:

This game is the new 38s Studios MMO imo

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How so, it's not trying to be an AAA MMO, it doesn't have to pay millions to the big names it's not employing unlike 38s. I think it's trying to be more of an independent MMO appealing to a much smaller community.

I mean as it will never be finished and will be talked about / shilled for years

You could be right. And if that happens it will largely be because of the lack of funding imo. The kickstarter money is nice but not nearly enough. They don't need 38 Studios boatloads of cash but 5 mill ain't gonna cut it.

So Mark will have to get that extra from somewhere. 38 Studios died because the cash flow dried up. Obviously, other things contributed but if Curt had managed to get the funding he needed then we would be instead talking about how shitty his WoW clone is after 2 months of playing it and moving on.

Grim1_sl said:

You could be right. And if that happens it will largely be because of the lack of funding imo. The kickstarter money is nice but not nearly enough. They don't need 38 Studios boatloads of cash but 5 mill ain't gonna cut it.

So Mark will have to get that extra from somewhere. 38 Studios died because the cash flow dried up. Obviously, other things contributed but if Curt had managed to get the funding he needed then we would be instead talking about how shitty his WoW clone is after 2 months of playing it and moving on.

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I think he had enough funding their execs just spent it really poorly. Didn't he contribute like 50m of his own money and on top of that got a 75m loan from RI?

Blackyce_sl said:

I think he had enough funding their execs just spent it really poorly. Didn't he contribute like 50m of his own money and on top of that got a 75m loan from RI?

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No doubt he could have done it with less. But Curt's business plan was for a AAA title. And back then everyone was spending buku bucks on new mmos and kept increasing the amount until SWTOR imploded. Bubble mmo funding mechanics.

My point was if he had gotten the cash then he would have finished the game. The most important part of finishing any game is funding. When that dries up is why and when games die before release. All other reasons are secondary. Hindsight then comes into play.

BankBank_sl said:

I paid $5 to the kickstarter to have access and while I have not spent any time on the forums this is completely what I assumed. There's nothing to talk about yet.

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eq:n thread: it's the same, cept there's no $5 cover.

Mates,

Updated with new Roadmap, they hired some people.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...d/posts/553444


Folks,

Happy Monday all! While Monday is not most people's favorite day of the week, I'll try to make it just a little bit better with today's update. We got a bunch of things to cover so away we go.

First, over the last two weeks we made three offers to people to join our team on a full-time basis. Fortunately for us, all three of them have accepted and they will be starting with us in the first half of August. Once they do, we will have a full-time producer (who also is a very skilled and experienced environmental artist, double-duty FTW!), a gameplay engineer (who also honorably served in our country's armed forces for eight years, including two tours in Iraq) as well as surprise hire of a community manager (we weren't even looking yet). All of these people fit in well with my belief in giving people opportunities not based solely on their previous experience in a role but rather their potential to grow into a role. That approach usually worked out quite well back at "old" Mythic Entertainment and I am confident that these people also have that potential. For those doubters among you, remember that when Mythic Entertainment went into development on Dark Age of Camelot nobody on that core development team had ever worked on an MMORPG nor even a game with a $1M+ budget. Hopefully we can have the same success with these and other future team members as we did more than a decade ago. Once they start work here I'll do a proper introduction but I think the Camelot Unchained Community will like them as much as we at CSE do.

Next up is our first stab at a product road map. Once we have the producer onboard we will get a lot fancier with this but for now we want to start each cycle (1-2 weeks at the start, one month or more after that) with an update about what is going on in the studio and what are major goals are for the cycle. John Smedley's crew did a great job with Planetside 2's roadmap and we will definitely be drawing on it for inspiration. Keep in mind that as usual, this schedule will change as necessary and there will be times where we won't want to talk about what we are working on. For this week, our goals are:
?Complete deployment of first pass of Camelot Unchained networking code with documentation. Yes Virginia, sometimes programmers do actually document their code.
?First pass at main server loop for Camelot Unchained. This is not the F# code that was used for SmackHammer but an all-new server loop.
?Internal testing of a first pass at a CSE patching system. This system will be developed using SmackHammer and eventually deployed for Camelot Unchained.
?Internal testing of a first pass of our account editor for Camelot Unchained. We're almost there so hopefully by the end of the week we'll be able to say that we can edit accounts more easily than we currently can.
?Update to the Camelot Unchained website. We're almost finished with a quick revamp of this so I expect that this will be an easy one to make.
?Internal testing of the UI/web interface. We hope to have C++/Javascript communication working so we can push data to the JS layer. That's one of the most important parts of the UI that will let us expose things like player health, party members, and other game data to the UI. We also hope to break the UI up into smaller more modular frames than we are currently using.
?Complete first art pass at the next race for Camelot Unchained. We have two possibilities right now (both are Arthurians) and one of them is definitely a little easier than the other but we'll see. One draws heavily on a Scottish legend while the other, well, it's different and also not so different at the same time.
?Continuing work on main animation system for Camelot Unchained. This is an ongoing process and while there isn't anything cool to show yet, it's important groundwork for the game.
?Continuing work on the building system for the game. As per above, nothing exciting to show yet but things continue to move forward.
?Continuing work on SmackHammer client and server as needed.
?Next BecomingT story for one of the two Arthurian races mentioned above.
?Complete first pass of updated levels for free version of March on Oz. This game will be released for iPads first and then we will move it to select Android tablets. Mea Culpa on this one, I wanted to have them done last week but life (and migraine) interfered.

We also have a number of other interviews for team members and I'm continuing to talk to a number of potential hardware/software partners.

Next on today's list is a SmackHammer progress report and UI work. SmackHammer worked very well last week and over the weekend with improved performance in terms of memory usage and the new networking code. It's not perfect yet but it's working pretty well considering the limited amount of time we put into it. Late last week we made some tremendous strides with our UI/web integration. As part of today's mass of screenshots I've included a shot that shows the integration of an IRC channel on the main screen.

Finally, it's time for my favorite part of any update, new concept art. This week it is the Hamadryads and, as usual, our team did a fine job. This week though we had a special guest star as Mike Milano (our modeler) lent a hand in the process. Like most of the other concepts, I asked our team to let their minds wander but with some very different instructions this time. First, I told them to think of the Hamadryads in a different way than is usually seen for this type of creature. Secondly, I told them to study both Guild War 2's Sylvari and the Dark Age of Camelot's Sylvan and make sure that our Hamadryads weren't clones, or even close to, those races. Also, the artists were tasked with incorporating many different elements into their concepts, including insects. What they did with those instructions is, in my opinion, quite interesting. Each of the pieces includes a reference to the thing(s) that they used as inspiration for the piece. We also have two "tail studies" as well since we hope to give the Hamadryads a tail attack along with other unique abilities. Oh, and before anyone says "You gave female Hamadryads high-heeled feet!" please note that when I saw those concepts I said the exact same thing to the artists and Michelle just looked at me and said "High heels are pretty. They also make them more eleganter!" and Sandra nodded in agreement. I bow to their artistic vision and note to that some of the males also have unusual feet. As usual, this is early concept work and there are even more pieces that will go up on our website. I hope you enjoy the Hamadryads!

That's it for this week's scheduled update.

-Mark

has Ut posted on this thread or is the fruit hanging too low

Why would a kickstarter funded game that's early in development hire a community manager? Not the greatest allocation of funds.

I bet Mark has more venture capital lined up. I disagree that this title will be vaporware. It'll definitely ship. Whether it will suck or not is the bigger question.

I agree with you Gecko that the biggest question is whether or not it's going to suck but I think you've already answered as to why they hired a community manager and it's because it did go through Kickstarter. The people that backed it are all sitting on the forums waiting for responses from developers that are few and far between and if you couple that with Jacobs mentioning in the update that it was a surprise hiring, I believe you have your answer.

But, Mark Jacobs lives for that community interaction stuff.

I'm curious if MJ is bringing back one of his original Camelot Herald peoples, or if he has a new hot 20something community manager. If the latter I get the feeling she'll be wearing two hats. Literally. lol

I used to work for Mythic when Mark Jacobs was developing Warhammer Online. I worked there until about 9 months after the game's release. I have a lot of faith in Mark, and it's good to see him out from under the corporate idiocy of EA. I have no doubts that Mark will make a great game.

Gecko_sl said:

Why would a kickstarter funded game that's early in development hire a community manager? Not the greatest allocation of funds.

I bet Mark has more venture capital lined up. I disagree that this title will be vaporware. It'll definitely ship. Whether it will suck or not is the bigger question.

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I thought the same thing why would they hire a CM so early.

He basically sort of answers that is and says he did not plan on hiring a CM so early but it was the right fit, so either its some exceptional person to him or little of that and maybe they can do some art or code as well till there CM gig kicks in.

Hell Teso is not till next Nov or Dec 2014 they have tons of media peps hired with all these new fancy titles beyond the CM. etc

It'll be really awkward if they don't get Sanya (Sonya?) back as a community manager. She was, afterall, the CM for like a decade of DAoC.