I'm not a overly creative person and my favorite parts of Landmark are crafting digging and exploring, I'd like the game a lot more if I could focus on that part of the game and just sell materials for templates of other peoples work. I can't make a cool looking house but I could build me an Ikea house from existing templates.
EQN:Landmark Beta Starts March 26th!
- Thread starter Quaid
- Start date
In many ways the game right now is the opposite of building in Minecraft/Terrarria. In those games you had basically unlimited space to build, but what you could build was not very detailed. In Landmark, you have a small area to build in, but you can get very detailed. And with that, I realized I'm more of a macro builder. I'd like to build dungeons, towns, landscapes etc, and fill in the details later. That's where I'd go into the Station Shop for templates, or share my plot with someone and have them refine the town. But with how limited the plots currently are, large scale builds are not possible.
So until they come out with combat, storybricks, or uncap the claim limit, I think I'm done. (oh and I lost everything because my claim expired, as did the mail message with all of my items... so there's that.)
I don't find the 20 percent comment offensive at all because it's the truth (and maybe even generous in Landmark's case). That's not the goal they should be aiming for, but it's the same shit with all player-creation focused games. Some really great levels came out of LittleBigPlanet but how many people of the millions of copies out there actually created a decent level? Or WarioWare DIY? Or Trials?
Landmarks issues are definitely compounded though because fucking around with voxels is a lot harder than the blocks of Minecraft and as we all agree, the user tools just aren't there yet. There's also no free for all mode where you can just click a button for infinite resources while also having an entire land mass to yourself.
The biggest issue I have is that it "launched" solely as a building came with all of the inherent issues of a building game with about a dozen extra limitations. That's why it's never grabbed my attention. I'd love to be a part of that 80 percent who enjoy what others are doing in Landmark, but that part of the game doesn't exist yet.
Landmarks issues are definitely compounded though because fucking around with voxels is a lot harder than the blocks of Minecraft and as we all agree, the user tools just aren't there yet. There's also no free for all mode where you can just click a button for infinite resources while also having an entire land mass to yourself.
The biggest issue I have is that it "launched" solely as a building came with all of the inherent issues of a building game with about a dozen extra limitations. That's why it's never grabbed my attention. I'd love to be a part of that 80 percent who enjoy what others are doing in Landmark, but that part of the game doesn't exist yet.
Utnayan
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I completely disagree and I think Georgeson's statement is akin to throwing up a surrender flag because they know they do not have the talent to make it easier to use. Taking a look at other player creation games which are easier to use, they sell by the millions. (Mindcraft). Yes, it isn't voxel based. It doesn't matter in my opinion. The tools and UI are easy enough for my 5 year old cousin to hop in and start understanding it immediately. Those statements make me believe they will not work out the major issue this title has, and that's ease of use within the UI and creating a toy. Something that Brian Schwab over at Storybricks understands is essential for game development from a community, and even making it intensely easy to use from a game developers perspective out in the real world.
Blizzard focuses very strongly in giving proper tools to their game developers to take the "technology understanding hurdles", in which that process can kill creativity and frustrate even the best game designers, out of the equation so those folks can concentrate purely on creating what it is in their head and placing it into a game. SOE needs to adopt this if they have any hope of understanding this type of market and it's potential, otherwise it will be another failed opportunity cost for them as they realize it too late, and another company takes it to the next level that they never could - whether that is because of SOE not having the talent to implement that strategy, or do not have the foresight to determine how important that is, or a little of both.
It depends on how big the pool is. Minecraft is working with an ocean of people while Landmark is currently a kid's pool. I wish there was a magic way to see the percentage of people who bought it and actually created something worthwhile versus those who got sick of stacking blocks after a week. I don't think 20 percent is that crazy of an assumption.
I think that number would mean a shitload of content if you've got millions of players. Landmark doesn't, nor will it reach that 20 percent mark if it opens to anyone other than the people that paid to alpha test it. Aside from my initial statement, I really don't think we disagree (that much?). Landmark's tool set is deeper and far more complicated than Minecraft and the tools don't compensate that curve. They're a mess and I got frustrated just properly copying and pasting shit. I damn sure won't be the go researching hours of Youtube videos on how to make a curve. That should be built into their system (I'm sure it will be eventually).
Notch checked all the boxes for mass success and head the right amount of luck. It runs on fucking everything, it's got an aesthetic that absolutely works for its cause and it's almost as easy to work with as stacking Lego's together (actually probably easier, forgive me, I was restricted to Lincoln Logs).
I think that number would mean a shitload of content if you've got millions of players. Landmark doesn't, nor will it reach that 20 percent mark if it opens to anyone other than the people that paid to alpha test it. Aside from my initial statement, I really don't think we disagree (that much?). Landmark's tool set is deeper and far more complicated than Minecraft and the tools don't compensate that curve. They're a mess and I got frustrated just properly copying and pasting shit. I damn sure won't be the go researching hours of Youtube videos on how to make a curve. That should be built into their system (I'm sure it will be eventually).
Notch checked all the boxes for mass success and head the right amount of luck. It runs on fucking everything, it's got an aesthetic that absolutely works for its cause and it's almost as easy to work with as stacking Lego's together (actually probably easier, forgive me, I was restricted to Lincoln Logs).
Utnayan
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Yeah we probably aren't that far off in agreeing to points. I personally think they will see more than 20% invested in creation if they make it easy and simple to use. If they don't, I am sure we will find out soon enough when/if they drop the ball, another company (Like Blizzard) copies it, makes it extremely easy to use and fun (like a toy) and they make hundreds of millions of dollars because of SOE's lack of implementation on that front.
kaid
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Or at least have arch shape tools and column shape tools. The system can clearly do it and people have any number of ways of doing those shapes and they should make it easier for novices to do it. That said overall everything I have attempted to build I have been able to. Not as ornately as some but overall I have been happy with what I have been able to make. That said given building is going to be a huge part of this tame the easier it is to build the better their retention will be.
Quaid
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I'm just honestly blown away that they didn't already know about the emergent techniques players have developed before hand.
You didn't know about microvoxels, zerodata voxels (etc) until players discovered them? These are the tools your devs were gonna use to make EQN? So... what... the smallest detail in the world was gonna be 6 inches wide? WTF did they plan on doing?
If I were them I would be pretty damn concerned. These techniques have created new standards for what 'looks good' in a voxel world. Now the artists are gonna have to produce in game assets as detailed as those the players are pumping out. Unless they make the tools more effective, EQNext's world is gonna be a bitch to build, and probably take way longer than they expected.
You didn't know about microvoxels, zerodata voxels (etc) until players discovered them? These are the tools your devs were gonna use to make EQN? So... what... the smallest detail in the world was gonna be 6 inches wide? WTF did they plan on doing?
If I were them I would be pretty damn concerned. These techniques have created new standards for what 'looks good' in a voxel world. Now the artists are gonna have to produce in game assets as detailed as those the players are pumping out. Unless they make the tools more effective, EQNext's world is gonna be a bitch to build, and probably take way longer than they expected.
Lenas
Trump's Staff
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They were probably planning on doing the reasonable thing, voxels for 90% of the builds with pre-rendered objects (props) for details.
kaid
Blackwing Lair Raider
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That was my impression from SOE live last year they fully expected it to be a bit blocky but with the smoothing tool they could make it look pretty good anyway. For stuff they needed more detail with props would have been used. As it turns out a lot of props appear to be unnecessary because people have squeezed levels of detail out of the engine that nobody thought of when it was being made.
I hope they squeeze new level of details. Buildings still look really flat and details aren't comparable to what modern engines can pull off, but I won't keep bringing that up and just hope that in time, this shit will look pretty damn good.
Utnayan
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I hope they are getting some nice kickbacks or free tools as a result of all this third party coverage they are giving them. (I am guessing they are doing fairly well on the licensing cost and a reason why they are using all this third party support) On the bad side, another possible point of failure. Which systems are actually IN control of SOE at this point? Just curious.
kaid
Blackwing Lair Raider
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I think if you can blow those buildings up with your spells and attacks any flatness would be more than made up for with the holy shit factor of destructibility. They are still adding features like being able to rotate things to more than just 45 degree angles which would make adding a lot more detail and depth much more easy to do. Right now people have to do a lot of tricks to disguise the inherent symmetry the system forces you into but once you can rotate things more freely to various angles things should start looking a lot more natural and fluid.
Skanda
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They are using their in-house Forgelight engine withVoxel Farmlayered on top of it. I'd assume SoE has pretty much a direct line to the Voxel Farm guy (Yes, singular) since they're essentially beta testing his engine for him.
kaid
Blackwing Lair Raider
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and from what I hear rewriting a lot of his code. From what I have heard from people who deal closely with this the voxel farm guy is a genius but his code is really badly optimized and they wind up having to do a lot of work redo things to run at the speed needed for an MMO.
Utnayan
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I understand that piece obviously, but MMORPG's need to be built from the ground up with code. Or... else.
Boom
As has been noted in some recent releases using complete 3rd party engines. As Skanda said, they are using Forgelight, but when you throw in other out of control/untested/beta technologies that are not fully developed, it goes back to my point that there is way too much building of the plane as they fly, and too many unknowns. Which means they definitely shouldn't be selling/hyping on futures which may or may not ever come into existence. Just being my usual jaded self
Daidraco
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I didnt know that there was limitations like that on the engine until Collete or w/e her name is started describing how players were having to create a campfire and shrink it down to a size that you cant see it disguised behind another item just so they could have smoke. Looking more into things like that, I can tell that they, or Collete and her crew rather, have a "Vision" because they have to be pushed into implementing some things. Hopefully the angle stuff you're talking about is a limitation of the engine for whatever reason, rather than some dumb ass reason they dont want players to have that option.