Camelot Unchained MMO

Mahes

Mahes

Silver Baronet of the Realm
6,725
10,747
jayrebb said:
DAOC also only cost 2.5 million dollars to make and had 25 employees. The industry is a lot different today. Ashes is nowhere near completion at 100m as another example.
Click to expand...
I feel like AoC has spent more than 100 million at this point. This is why AoC's game state seems so amazingly poor for the money spent. Camelot Unchained is never coming out the way we would like it to.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
Kirun

Kirun

Buzzfeed Editor
21,123
18,151
jayrebb said:
The industry is a lot different today.
Click to expand...
A lot of it is this.

People always make these retarded comparisons without context. It's like comparing a muscle car from 1970 to an EV and wondering why it needs more engineers, testing, software, etc.

Back in 2001 you were developing for ONE platform (usually PC or ONE console) - now you have PC + 2-3 consoles.
You usually had fixed resolution targets (remember when you could FINALLY upgrade to 800x600?) - now you have multiple performance targets of 30/60/90/120/144FPS etc., Ultrawide, HDR, VRR, etc.
Very minimal post launch support in most cases - now you have live services, seasons, hotfixes, etc.
Limited to no accessibility features - now you have colorblind modes, mouse free modes, blind modes, controller support, etc.
Localization - Now you have to translate to 10-20 different localized languages, etc.
Online infrastructure, telemetry, analytics, anti-cheat, etc.

That doesn't even touch on how much assets have changed either. Typical polygon counts in 2001 were 500-2000, one texture, baked lighting, etc. Now things are 50k-150k polygons, multiple textures, facial rigs, motion capture, cloth/hair physics interactions, etc. Art production is closer to VFX now.

It's a fucking apples to mangosteens comparison.
 
jayrebb

jayrebb

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
15,833
15,826
Kirun said:
A lot of it is this.

People always make these retarded comparisons without context. It's like comparing a muscle car from 1970 to an EV and wondering why it needs more engineers, testing, software, etc.

Back in 2001 you were developing for ONE platform (usually PC or ONE console) - now you have PC + 2-3 consoles.
You usually had fixed resolution targets (remember when you could FINALLY upgrade to 800x600?) - now you have multiple performance targets of 30/60/90/120/144FPS etc., Ultrawide, HDR, VRR, etc.
Very minimal post launch support in most cases - now you have live services, seasons, hotfixes, etc.
Limited to no accessibility features - now you have colorblind modes, mouse free modes, blind modes, controller support, etc.
Localization - Now you have to translate to 10-20 different localized languages, etc.
Online infrastructure, telemetry, analytics, anti-cheat, etc.

That doesn't even touch on how much assets have changed either. Typical polygon counts in 2001 were 500-2000, one texture, baked lighting, etc. Now things are 50k-150k polygons, multiple textures, facial rigs, motion capture, cloth/hair physics interactions, etc. Art production is closer to VFX now.

It's a fucking apples to mangosteens comparison.
Click to expand...

Caught my eye on the Warhammer MMO final producers letter (pre-shutdown).

1768421373464.png


Aside from the sentiment that things aren't like that anymore, the QA mention I thought was interesting. QA has mostly been reduced across the space over the last few years. It's been a longtime target for layoffs and just having 1-2 guys called QA so they can say they have QA.

QA sounded a lot more involved in 2000's development, to where they are helping drive the process.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
jayrebb

jayrebb

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
15,833
15,826
Mahes said:
I feel like AoC has spent more than 100 million at this point. This is why AoC's game state seems so amazingly poor for the money spent. Camelot Unchained is never coming out the way we would like it to.
Click to expand...

There is an effort to suppress and downplay Ashes spending as the studio knows it's become a negative talking point regarding progress. It used to be having big funding meant good things. Today all it means is something has gone awry.

We know for a fact they cited operational costs of 40m a year for two years in a row. We don't know much beyond that, but pushing over 100m after the Steam sale made 10 million dollars is highly likely.
 
Kirun

Kirun

Buzzfeed Editor
21,123
18,151
jayrebb said:
QA sounded a lot more involved in 2000's development, to where they are helping drive the process.
Click to expand...
Yes and no.

Sure, some of those teams were probably reduced and/or outsourced to other countries, AI, etc. But there's also a LOT more QA teams have to account for now too.

Back in 2001 you had limited hardware configs, fewer edge cases, and bugs were mostly "accepted". I can't even tell you the amount of times DAoC would crash on me back in that era and it was just something I dealt with.

Now you have literal thousands of PC hardware permutations, certification requirements for each console, multiplayer edge cases, accessibility compliance, regression testing across years of content, etc. The surface area for QA teams has exploded since 2001.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.